THE 



Social Life; 



Philosophy of Society. 



INCLUDING 



SOCIAL RELATIONS, CONDUCT AND CHARAC- 
TER, SOCIAL INTERCOURSE, PERSONAL 
ATTRACTIVENESS, AND AFFAIRS 
OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 



EDITED BY 

ELSON DOUGLASS. 
n 



'Man was made of social earth.'''' — Emerson. 



ILLUSTRATED. ~j - 



PUBLISHED BY 
THE BELMONT PUBLISHING CO., 

1131 Chestnut Street, 
PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



^1 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

THE BELMONT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



This book is sold only by subscription. Residents of any State who 
may desire a copy, and who do not know where to find an Agent, will 
please address the Publishers, with directions as on the previous page. 



Westcott & Thomson 

ypers and Electrolypers, Phllada, 



N 



& 



& 



A 






•; 




The subjects discussed in the following pages 
are of interest and importance to every one. com- 
panionship is a need of humanity; and our rela- 
tions to others, the means of social success and 
enjoyment, the many and diversified influences 
that control society and affect immensely our 

life's WORK AND HAPPINESS, ARE WORTHY OF ATTEN- 
tion and investigation. 

Not only those things that belong to society in 
general, but also those which affect closer and 
more tender intimacies, are deserving of notice. 
True affection is elevating, purifying, beneficent; 
and yet the lives of multitudes are blasted or 
rendered barren from a want of knowledge or 
misconception of the nature of those ties which 
bind hearts together ; and what might be sunshine 
and gladness is turned into clouds and sorrow. 

"as in water face answereth to face, so the 
heart of man to man." the lessons we learn from 
the experience and counsels of others will aid us 
in directing our own affairs, and teach us how 
to make the most of life. 




CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

L— ACQUAINTANCES 9 

IL— OUR FRIENDS 17 

III.— FRIEND'S FRIENDS 22 

IV.— WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS 30 

V.— LADIES' SOCIETY 38 

VI.— NEIGHBORS 46 

VII.— HERMITS 53 

VIII.— VISITS AND REVISITS 57 

IX.— SOCIAL EQUIVALENTS 66 

X.— GETTING ON IN SOCIETY 69 

XL— CIVILITY 74 

XII.— ELEMENTS OF PLEASANTNESS 82 

XIII.— SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION 87 

XIV.— MISTAKES IN CHARACTER 96 

XV.— USES OF DIGNITY 104 

XVI.— CONVENTIONALITIES 110 

XVII.— MANNERS 116 

XVIII.— AGREEABLE PEOPLE 136 

XIX.— CONVERSATION 143 

1* 5 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XX.— GOOD TALKING : '. 152 

XXL— SOCIAL SILENCE 157 

XXIL— RESERVED PEOPLE 164 

XXIIL— SOCIAL SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE 

PLANTS 173 

XXIV.— TACT 181 

XXV.— THE TALENT OF LOOKING LIKE A FOOL 

WITH PROPRIETY 188 

XXVI.— PERSONAL FASCINATION 196 

XXVII.— GOOD LOOKS 202 

XXVIII.— PLAINNESS AND ILL-FAVOR 208 

XXIX.— WOMEN'S FACES 215 

XXX.— BEAUTY AND BRAINS 222 

XXXL— IDEAL WOMEN 230 

XXXIL— POPULAR WOMEN 235 

XXXIIL— BUTTERCUPS 243 

XXXIV.— SWEET SEVENTEEN 250 

XXXV.— MATURE SIRENS 259 

XXXVI.— GREAT GIRLS ^. 268 

XXXVII.— PRETTY WOMEN..... 274 

XXXVIIL— MEN'S FAVORITES 281 

XXXIX.— LITTLE WOMEN 288 

XL.— WIVES 296 

XLL— POOR MEN'S WIVES , 306 

XLIL— WIDOWS 314 

XLIIL— WOMANLINESS 320 

XLIV.— PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 328 

XLV.— FALLING IN LOVE 335 



CONTENTS. 7 

PAGE 

XLVL— FIRST LOVE 342 

XLVIL— FLIRTATIONS 350 

XLVIIL— QUIET ATTENTIONS 365 

XLIX.— CHOOSING A WIFE , 372 

L.— MESALLIANCES 378 

LL— LOVERS' MISERIES 386 

LIL— BACHELORS BY PROFESSION. 39S 

LIIL— WAITING FOR PRINCE PRETTYMAN 403 

LIV.— PROPOSALS 408 

, LV.— MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS 418 

LVL— BROKEN HEARTS 426 

LVII.— GETTING MARRIED 435 

LVIIL— MISERIES OF THE HONEYMOON 442 

LIX.— SWEETS OF MARRIED LIFE 446 

LX.— YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES 450 

LXL— LOVE'S LIGHT 463 




ILLUSTRATIONS. 



I.— A SOCIAL GATHERING Frontispiece. 

IL— A DELIGHTFUL CROWD 42 

III.— "SOMEBODY'S COMING, AND I KNOW WHO" 57 

IV.— THE PICNIC 82 

V.— THE JUDGE'S RIDE 105 

VI.— THE TOUGH STORY 148 

VII.— A FEW WORDS OF EXPLANATION 201 

VIII.— "WHAT DOES THE FACE TELL?" 215 

IX.— THE POPULAR WOMAN 243 

X.— GIRLHOOD , % 250 

XL— THE FIRST VISIT 335 

XII.— THE OLD, OLD STORY 342 

XIII.— EARLY AFFECTION 349 

XIV.— FLIRTATIONS 364 

XV.— TENDER WORDS '. 371 

XVI.— ACCEPTED 408 

XVII.— INTERRUPTED 418 

XVIII.— SHADOWS SEEN BY THE REJECTED 434 

XIX.— "HE LOVES, HE LOVES ME NOT" 435 

XX.— OUR OWN FIRESIDE 450 

8 



The Social Life. 



ACQUAINTANCES. 




I! HERE is a very common confusion of ideas be- 
ll tween acquaintances and friends, which not only 
L gives false notions of society, but results in a good 
deal of conceit and harsh judging. Some people 
are always wondering and regretting that ac- 
quaintances do not turn into friends by a sort of natural 
growth or transformation ; while others affect to despise 
acquaintances, because they are not friends, and there- 
fore not worth having. In talk and in theory " mere " 
acquaintances, as they are called, are disparaged. Ac- 
quaintanceship is thought a worldly thing ; and indeed 
there is no surer test of worldliness with a good many 
minds than that persons should accept society for what 
it is — the intercourse of acquaintances — and find pleas- 
ure in it. To know many people, and to know them 
mainly through their open and palpable qualities and 
gifts — to like their company without curiously inquiring 
whether the existing superficial sympathy may be forced 
into deeper and more intimate currents of feeling — is 

9 



10 ACQUAINTANCES. 

supposed to imply a frivolous, a cold or a worldly tem- 
per. This sentiment is embodied in so many representa- 
tions of life — from that of the austere professor who de- 
nounces dinner-parties because the guests are apt to take 
an airy and cursory view of things, and to abstain from 
probing into each other's profounder convictions — who 
would confine every social demonstration to tea-meet- 
ings of a very few friends of identical habits and feel- 
ings—down to that of the toper who sings over his cups, 
" Only give him his friend and his glass, all the rest of 
the world may go hang" — that it may be called universal. 

That is, it is universal as a sentiment, for it is inca- 
pable of being really put in practice. Everybody has 
acquaintances, could ill spare them and is really greatly 
indebted to them, even though there may be no chance 
of the relation ever changing into that of intimate friend- 
ship. Persons are not worse than we are because entire 
sympathy is incompatible between our natures and 
theirs. Yet, when people talk and write of acquaint- 
ances in contrast with friends, there is generally a growl 
at the hollow world, as though the grumbler stood out- 
side of it. No such thing. The world .may be hollow, 
but this is not a necessary proof of it. It is no sign of 
its hollowness that men who meet one another on cer- 
tain understood terms of guarded approach do not get 
nearer. Our friends may be hollower, less sincere, than 
our acquaintances, and yet may suit us better — may 
reach a different, deeper, more intimate part of us, adapt 
themselves with a nicer fit and adjustment to what is 
peculiar and characteristic in us, and be bound to us, 
and we to them, by a stronger, more exacting, and more 
sacred tie than acquaintances, however estimable. 

It is clearly necessary to establish the generic differ- 
ence between friendship and ordinary social intercourse 



ACQUAINTANCES. 11 

before we can settle the claims and duties of each. Once 
grant that mere acquaintanceship is a good and profit- 
able relation in itself, though developing into nothing 
closer and warmer, and we shall see that a great deal 
that has at all times been said on this subject is unjust 
as well as impracticable through the neglect of proper 
distinctions. It is through our circle of acquaintance, 
so far as it is at once well chosen and extensive, that we 
realize our duties as citizens, so to say — that we derive 
our knowledge of mankind, and learn the claims of our 
own class and what we owe to it — that we acquire pro- 
priety of manner and independence of thought. 

Acquaintanceship is, in fact, the medium through 
which we see the world — by which we touch it and be- 
come cognizant of public opinion. If it were possible 
for men to have none but intimate friends between them 
and the vast system at work around them, they would 
degenerate into every form of crotchety eccentricity, 
overbearing tyranny or enervating dependence. But it 
is quite clear that this external social connection, to be 
of mutual service, must be under quite different laws 
from those which regulate friendship ; and this is just 
the distinction which prosy moralists, or moralists when 
they are prosy, have refused to acknowledge. From our 
childhood we have read denunciations of society as 
heartless and ungrateful for letting its members slip 
through and pass out of sight under the touch of misfor- 
tune. The popular, picturesque illustration of this in 
story-books used to be the easy, careless, amiable spend- 
thrift, who, after lavishing his fortune upon so-called 
friends, was in the evil hour deserted by them. 

Now, friends are not the sort of people men do lavish 
fortunes upon. The spendthrift wished to make a figure 
or to enjoy himself, and collected about him whoever 



12 ACQ UAINTANCES. 

would further this end. But it was really the fault of 
the spender, not of the world, that he should drop 
through after his money was gone. The assumption 
was preposterous, that after his own means were wasted 
his acquaintance should make all straight by giving him 
theirs ; which was the moral apparently pressed on our 
raw and perplexed judgment. Acquaintances are not- 
called upon to advise one another on their private affairs. 
They have not data upon which to judge of prudence or 
imprudence. On this point each man must take care 
of himself, and do his duty to society by setting a wise 
example. 

Toward acquaintance men act in their corporate ca- 
pacity as members of society, while friendship is strictly 
a tie between two contracting parties with which society 
has no right to interfere. Of course, people act upon 
this view of the difference between the two relations ; 
but if they act under a confused idea that there is some- 
thing insincere and heartless in it all the while, they are 
likely to be heartless and insincere. They shuffle and 
shirk and fail in the kindness and tenderness which be- 
long alike to every form of intercourse. , In fact, people 
are often unfeeling and even cruel to old acquaintances, 
because they fear that sacrifices which are only due to 
friendship will be expected from them. 

If it were true that it is hard-hearted and hollow not 
to hold by acquaintances through every turn of fortune, 
every change of circumstances and every difficulty that 
time throws in the way, then the fewer of them we form 
the better; and some people, in argument at least, are 
quite ready to act upon this principle, and to confine 
their society to those whom, in an exact sense, they call 
friends. But in fact, in the true meaning of the word, 
people cannot have many friends; nor will they have 



ACQUAINTANCES. 13 

any more for rejecting acquaintances, nor be any better 
morally; while intellectually they will miss a great 
freshening and polishing influence on human nature, 
which requires for its development popular and general 
intercourse as well as particular intimacies. 

In defending society from the charge of being neces- 
sarily hollow, by showing that its ordinary intercourse 
is not founded on false pretences, we are not denying 
that it may be unsatisfactory. It is unsatisfactory that 
appearances do not go for all they seem to the uninitiated, 
that reality eludes men's grasp, that all people who reflect 
on their position find something illusory and infirm in 
their hold of things. Certain it is that there is no com- 
plaint more universal than the want of a staff of real 
friends. People cannot understand how, friendship being 
so human a thing, there should be so little of it. They 
perpetually attribute the defect in their own life to cir- 
cumstances, and generally with a show of reason ; and 
all that can be said is, that circumstances which seem 
so trivial, or so peculiar, or so accidental, appear to be 
in this matter a universal agent. The cry, after all, does 
not come from the affections. It springs from the desire 
to be a living, acting, necessary part of the world in 
which we find ourselves. 

This impatience and repining is natural in the young, 
whose hopes are alive and their anticipations all astir on 
every new acquaintance out of whom imagination can 
construct a castle or a vision. Until experience has done 
its work, there is something intolerable to ardent tem- 
peraments in facing the slight tenure which they really 
have on all they see — the little hold they have, or are 
ever likely to have, on what they take society to be. 
To be attracted by people, to meet them at stated times, 
but always with some impediment to any effusion of 
2 



14 ACQUAINTANCES. 

thought and sentiment, to make no way, to find the 
same friendly cordiality always succeeded, when the 
occasion is past, by the same indifference, disgusts them, 
and makes them rail, not, of course, at this particular 
instance, but at the society which permits such things, 
and holds congenial souls back from the thrilling pleas- 
ures of a real encounter. They are apt to think their 
elders cold and spoilt by the world, who resign them- 
selves to things as they find them, are less exacting from 
fate, and expect nothing from society but what it' gives. 
They cannot understand persons who enjoy an agreeable 
acquaintance, though the periodical meetings lead to 
nothing further, and who learn to be satisfied with the 
refreshment and variety as far as they go, without ex- 
pecting deeper satisfaction from such intercourse, or any 
fundamental changes in their daily life — who can -esti- 
mate pleasant people at their full value, yet reconcile 
themselves to the conviction that these people's choicer 
gifts and warmer intimacies are not for them. 

Time shows us all that a man may have much in him 
which suits us and fits in with us in matters of general 
interest, yet be wanting on all points necessary for private 
satisfaction. These public qualities are good and worthy 
ones, and it is fair that they should have their arena and 
be esteemed at their true value, though the same mind 
may have inferior or, to us, utterly uncongenial elements. 
Moreover, we learn by experience that there are real, 
substantial good qualities which yet fit people rather for 
acquaintances than friends, because these qualities are 
constantly clogged with some alloy which tells upon 
close intimacy. Thus, brilliant conversational powers 
are inestimable in an acquaintance, but have certainly 
their drawback in a friend ; and a good grasp of general 
subjects, or wit, or polish, or grace of manner, is com- 



ACQUAINTANCES. 15 

patible with particular intellectual wants and defective 
sympathies which might, and constantly do, detract from 
their charm and disqualify for friendship. 

Again, there is a diffusive benevolence and general good- 
nature, incapable of distinct preferences, but quickened 
into activity by cheerful scenes, which makes "nice" 
people and desirable acquaintances, though, for our part, 
we should not look to them in the emergencies of life. 
Indeed, a host of natural deficiencies ma3^ be kept out 
of sight in guarded intercourse, and we may be only 
gainers by what general society fosters and brings to 
light. So far, there is no " hollowness " nor worldliness 
in those who accept society for what it is — a scene where 
all are on their good behavior and in a position to show 
their more agreeable qualities and to keep the rest in the 
background. When people, through habit and dead- 
ness to higher things, grow satisfied and content with 
acquaintances only, and have lost even the yearning for 
anything deeper or more intimate, then, of course, they 
become open to the charge of hollowness. 

What we would say is, that acquaintances, and ac- 
quaintances only, can awaken certain feelings and do 
certain things for us. It is precisely because we do not 
know them intimately, nor they us, that this service is 
rendered. Society, as it is conducted in highly-civilized 
and artificial communities, requires great powers of ret- 
icence, selection and self-control in those who mix in it. 
Inexperienced persons on finding themselves suddenly 
part of it are almost certain, if they throw themselves 
into the scene at all, to commit themselves by over-energy 
of expression, by too earnest a tone, by showing parts 
of themselves, for which this is not the fitting sphere, 
and on becoming conscious of this difference between 
.themselves and those around them, a sense of resentment 



16 ACQ UAINTANCES. 

is awakened against a state of things which has made 
their sincerity and warmth appear outre, and perhaps 
ridiculous. 

But the necessary repression of what it is delightful 
to impulsive natures to express is really a check upon 
vanity and display. Every person accustomed to society 
feels that he must not obtrude even his most heartfelt 
convictions too forcibly, where it cannot be done without 
also obtruding himself. The light, passing, superficial 
treatment of subjects even of interest in mixed circles 
does not imply, as some suppose, that people have not 
profound convictions which, elsewhere, and on what 
seem to them fitting occasions, they can express with 
both the force and warmth their importance demands. 
But experience has taught them that the republic of 
society will not and cannot stand dictators, and that the 
unrestrained liberty of speech of one would be the sub- 
jection and suppression of the rest. People may fancy 
themselves superior who will go nowhere where they 
may not speak their minds, and who shun all that are 
not of their own way of thinking. But they miss a dis- 
cipline which might make them of service in their gen- 
eration, and they also miss the taste of that exhilarating 
yet unselfish pleasure which minds open to the influ- 
ence of society can alone experience through the genial 
contact of numbers — Cl that pleasure the mind seasoned 
with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a 
multitude of people who seem pleased with one an- 
other, and are partakers of the same common entertain- 
ment." 



OUR FRIENDS. 




HEY are delightful people, take them altogether. 
True, there are some exceptions ; there are people 
who enjoy the title only in right of very long ac- 
quaintance, of having been thrown with us by 
circumstances, and so forth, and these may or 
may not be charming people. They hold their place in 
our regard on different grounds from those whom we 
have chosen of our own free-will and pleasure, from 
sympathy and mutual attraction. Perhaps we may not 
be quite so fond of them as of the others — perhaps they 
may sometimes even bore us considerably — and yet, all 
said and done, the commonplace friendship of old habit 
has its value. There are moments when any and every 
sort of regard is of importance — moments when we are 
" down on our luck" — when things are against us, and 
we have perhaps been grieved, hurt, mortified — when 
the comfort of any loyal friend who will stand by us, 
and treat us with the pleasant, genial manner of happier 
times, free from change or from any suspicion of an 
arriere pensee, is indeed unspeakable. Not that our 
more commonplace friends are at all more likely to do 
this than our most sympathetic and effusive ones. We 
by no means hold the theory of the good little books of 

2* B 17 



18 OUR FRIENDS. 

our youth, that all pleasant, fascinating people are hol- 
low-hearted flatterers who will turn against us in the 
time of trial, while all dull, prosaic ones are " faithful 
for ever." No ; what we assert is that all are valuable 
and precious after their kind, and we think it is not 
generally sufficiently recognized how great a boon is 
friendship — not only friendship of the Damon-and- 
Pythias order, but of a larger scope. Other sorts of love 
have had praises enough. Passing over the one pecu- 
liar kind, if we come to family affection, we may find 
volumes written about it. The love of parents for their 
children is the theme of all time, and if one only went 
by what one read, one might suppose that there never 
could be a selfish or unworthy feeling mixed with it, 
And so every sort of relationship is always fully recog- 
nized by good books and good people. But friendship 
hardly is — and yet, why ? Why is it not thought that 
duty and gratitude bind you to those who have helped 
to lighten your mortal pilgrimage, even if they are 
strangers in blood ? 

The truth is, people always " beg the question," and 
take for granted that near relations must necessarily 
think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings. 
Heads of houses, who cannot be argued with, think so 
especially, and so, no doubt, it ought to be; but is it 
always so ? Is it not sometimes true instead, that differ- 
ent ideas, different interests, different opinions creep in — 
very small at first, like the " little rift within the lute," 
and people say, "What do these small things signify 
when at heart we are unchanged?" And yet these small 
things do .signify, for of small things this life is chiefly 
composed, and there cannot be comfort in families where 
everything is looked on from a different point of view, 
and outward harmony is preserved by the weaker side. 



OUR FRIENDS. 19 

keeping silence, or at best by mutual forbearance. For- 
bearance may be a great virtue, but we are not now 
speaking of virtue — we are speaking of comfort; and 
where so much forbearance has to be exercised among 
relations it is highly desirable to seek consolation and 
sympathy from some other source. Very often, too, it is 
wiser for different reasons that relations should not be 
too deep in each other's counsels ; if you want advice, 
it is better to seek it from the best source you can, and 
spare your relations what is to them a very serious and 
painful responsibility. Of course there are cases where 
relations must be called in ; but very often it is better 
to live one's own life quietly to one's self, not having any 
confidant unless it is necessary ; and if one must trust 
somebody, let it be some wise, discreet friend who will 
give us counsel and sympathy as a privilege, not as a 
right — who will not insist on telling us how very wrong 
and foolish we have been, but who will kindly and 
patiently listen and console us, and will, when the 
trouble is over, let it drift quietly into the ocean of the 
past. It has been said, " If you want advice, go to your 
relations ; if you want help, go to your friends." This 
may sound severe on one's relations ; but the truth is, 
the fact of their being related often makes it impossible 
for them to give help. They are too much a part of 
yourself, and your interests and theirs are too identical. 
Help, support, countenance, must come from an outsider ; 
besides, a misunderstanding or mischief-making between 
relations often lies at the bottom of your difficulty, and 
then to invoke the help of another relation will make a 
family quarrel at once. No ; relationship is one thing, 
and friendship another ; and it is best to keep them dis- 
tinct where our life's threads require delicate handling. 
•Then, too, different people's help is required for different 



20 OUR FRIENDS. 

sorts of occasions ; and here is one of the great beauties 
of friendship — that it is unlimited. 

One of the most sagacious moralists of the present 
da}' has placed in the mouth of one of his characters 
this definition of the duties of a friend : " Never to ask 
disagreeable questions, nor to make personal observa- 
tions, and to defend them (that is, their friends) behind 
their backs; 1 ' to this might be added, to avoid making 
inconvenient requests, and never to indulge in flat con- 
tradiction. There are some faults which are eminently 
oppressive to others, such as eternally lecturing, teach- 
ing, criticising, improving and setting people straight. 
There are others which injure only those who commit 
them, and these delinquents find forgiveness more easily 
than others, though they are not always those who cause 
the least suffering. To avoid any undue strain on affec- 
tion it is much more needful to think alike on small 
topics than to be of accord on great questions. On the 
whole, it is safer to criticise the principles of your friend 
than to offend his tastes, and there are minds so wise 
and tolerant in their nature as to maintain the most 
harmonious relations; and yet the one may steadily 
refuse to adopt the other's notion of the infinite. More- 
over, the man or woman who never, if possible, dis- 
appoints a reasonable expectation or withholds or defers 
a hoped-for pleasure, will be more loved than he who 
is prodigal of gifts and indulgences of a sudden, unex- 
pected, and, occasionally, inopportune kind. 

You may have any number of friends, and may make 
new ones whenever Providence gives you the opportunity. 
This, indeed, should be remembered; for, alas ! the wear 
and tear of life too often deprives us of old friends; not 
from any fault, but from the force of circumstances, 
change of residence, change of condition. They drift 



OUR FRIENDS. 21 

away; and though we may love them and they may 
love us as well as ever, still their power and hour for 
help and comfort is on the wane. It is very, very sad, 
but so it is; and none carl have lived long in the 
world without too well knowing the sadness of those 
" Good-byes " that convey so little and contain so much. 
Yes, even to that sad uncertainty as to the future which 
has led to Lord Lytton's mournful remark, that " per- 
haps the saddest part of a farewell is the future meeting 
again." All must know the solemn feeling of seeing one 
with whom we were once intimate, but whom we have 
not seen for many years ; the anxiety as to whether look 
and manner will be very different ; the wish to seem at 
ease when Ave are weighted with the consciousness that 
we must " say the right thing," and we are stiff and 
silent because nothing seems worth saying. It is better 
to try and take it more lightly — better to begin with the 
ordinary topics of good breeding, and drift by degrees 
into deeper subjects. 

And let no one think to preserve an old friendship by 
refusing to make new. We should cultivate kindliness 
and courtesy with all, and if these should ripen into a 
warmer friendship w r ith some, so much the better, for it 
is a clear gain. Friendship has been called " V amour sans 
les ailes " (it may also be added, " without his poisoned 
arrows ") ; and one of its best features is its freedom 
from jealousy. 



"FRIEND'S FRIENDS." 




1| HERE is no relation more peculiar than that in 
which a man stands to his friend's friends. It is 
' the exact opposite of that which in great cities 
usually exists between a man and his next-door 
neighbors. The latter are among the most 
familiar objects of your daily life, but, except by sight, 
you know nothing of them. You see them coming in 
and going out, but, constant as are your encounters, two 
different worlds, to all intents and purposes, lie on each 
side of the partition-wall which separates their drawing- 
room from yours. Your friend's friends, on the contrary, 
you may never even have seen, and may yet know inti- 
mately. So far as personal acquaintance is concerned, 
they are a mere abstraction, and yet, if there be some- 
thing about them to excite your interest, you may, at 
different times and through different channels, be silently 
accumulating a mass of evidence about their characters 
and dispositions, until you feel that you know Pylades 
almost as well as Orestes does. Friendship, like relation- 
ship, has its table of dpgrees ; and those friendships once 
removed have something about them of the piquancy 
of an incognito. In this silent and unsuspected study 
of character there is the same sort of pleasure that is 
22 



"FRIEND'S FRIENDS: 1 23 

found, if fairy-tales are to be credited, in wearing an in- 
visible cap, or wandering about, like Haroun Alraschid, 
at night in disguise, or in any other way gratifying the 
innate desire of the human bosom to peep at people 
unobserved. Casual expressions, dropped in a letter or 
a conversation, are a sort of tron-judas, affording many 
a glimpse of persons who little think they are at the time 
the objects of any scrutiny. Those who are thus known 
to you only through another, at once strangers and 
familiar, are acquaintances as incorporeal as the charac- 
ters of a novel. You note their qualities and trace their 
fortunes much as you do those of an imaginary hero or 
heroine. But they differ from mere creations of fancy 
in the possibility which always exists of their passing 
some day from the region of the ideal into that of the 
real, and becoming personally known and loved. 

One of the chief reasons for feeling a curiosity about 
your friend's friends is that they may furnish the best 
possible illustration of your own friend's character. The 
view which one person takes of another is necessarily 
partial and limited. It is modified and determined by 
a thousand different circumstances. It is a common 
fallacy to suppose that between friends there must be on 
all points an identity of likes and dislikes, and that 
with any agreement short of this friendship cannot con- 
sist. Every-day experience shows that it can, and gen- 
erally does, consist with much less. One point of sym- 
pathy, one common taste, will support a friendship 
between two persons otherwise widely different. No 
two natures could have been more unlike than those of 
the worthy and ponderous Dr. Johnson and his brilliant 
and dissolute contemporary, Beauclerk. One link alone 
held them together — a common love of literature — and 
outweighed all other dissimilarities. 



24 "FRIEND'S FRIENDS." 

A warm and sincere regard is often based on nothing 
more solid than a community of crotchets or whims — a 
common belief in the water-cure, a common admiration 
for a particular preacher, a common passion for old 
china, a love of the same dish. The virtuous man is 
parted from the vicious by a moral abyss, but it is curi- 
ous to notice how often the gulf is bridged by a common 
taste for Elzevir editions and old Wedgewood. Minor 
affinities often create a tie capable of bearing the strain 
of great moral and intellectual discrepancies. There are, 
of course, friendships founded on a larger view and a 
deeper appreciation of character. In friendship, as in 
trade, the principle of limited liability is generally recog- 
nized. A man of the world as little thinks of concen- 
trating all his sympathies upon one friend as of risking 
his whole capital in one commercial venture. He is 
quite content to parcel them out among many — to re- 
solve, as it were, into its chief elements the complex 
whole of his thoughts, tastes and yearnings, and obtain 
a separate outlet for each. One man he meets on the 
ground of art alone. To another he is attracted solely 
by political affinities. To a third he is drawn by the 
mesmeric force of religious sympathy. The materials 
for friendship lie broadcast around every man, and are 
seldom to be found, as it were, all in one block. It is 
only by an eclectic process that they can be brought 
together and disposed in such combinations as to soothe 
and sweeten life. 

The two parties to a friendship resemble the two 
parties to a bargain — each possesses a commodity which 
the other is anxious to obtain. Take, for example, the 
intimacy which often springs up between a young girl 
and an old woman. What is this but an exchange of 
enthusiasm for experience, prospect for retrospect, fresh- 



"FRIEND'S FRIENDS." 25 

ness for maturity, springtide hopes for autumnal regrets ? 
Youth has something to offer which has a special charm 
for age. Age has it in its power to gratify the strong 
curiosity of youth. Each can supply that for which the 
other yearns, and upon the sympathy on a particular 
point thus exchanged the whole friendship hangs. A 
single fact — the disparity of years — is the connecting link. 
But sympathy on one point by no means implies sym- 
pathy on all. If the majority of friendships are founded 
on a partial view of character — if they deal, not with the 
whole man, but with some part of him only, some one 
gift or quality which he may possess, or some accident 
even of his birth or training — it is evident that the dear- 
est friends may have but an approximate notion of each 
other's real character. Some salient feature only is brought 
out into strong relief, just as in storm at night some 
peculiar eminence or building is lit up by a sudden flash, 
while the rest of the landscape is all obscurity. The 
condition of most friendships is this — to know intimately 
the tenth part of a man, and to be utterly ignorant of 
the other nine-tenths. 

But there are others who may have had opportunities 
for observing him from a point of view wholly different 
from yours. Here, then, it is that you may learn much 
from your friend's friends. The point of contact between 
you and a certain person may be metaphysics — between 
him and some one else, music. You recognize your 
friend only in abstruse speculations about the origin of 
evil or the immortality of the soul. You have never 
contemplated him from his musical side, and his pas- 
sionate fondness, therefore, for Auber and Rossini comes 
upon you with the force of a new revelation. How in- 
teresting to know that the man whom you have learnt 
to associate almost exclusively with Aristotle or Plato 

3 



26 "FBIFND'S FBIENDS." 

was last autumn a constant and enthusiastic frequenter 
of musical performances ! What a new light it sheds on 
his character to find that he likes the company of one who 
has never heard of the Republic, or the Ethics, or Bishop 
Butler, or Paley, or Carey, and whose talk is wholly 
about Meyerbeer's long-promised Africaine, and Gounod's 
Faust, and Titiens and Patti, and all the flying rumors 
of the musical artists ! 

Or you may chance to number among your friends a 
man of the dry official type. You live whole years, and 
you might live centuries, without making the discovery 
that he has tastes which belong to a man of totally dif- 
ferent stamp. But he happens to have an old school- 
fellow and contemporary, who casually informs you 
that your solemn friend is a first-rate man across coun- 
try. The same man who cannot give a deputation 
a straightforward answer is prompt and bold in the 
hunting-field, and possesses an amount of vigor and 
manliness with which you never credit him. What a 
pleasant surprise ! and with what different eyes will you 
regard him hereafter ! Or there may be some fair votary 
of fashion whom you have never seen except as a bril- 
liant butterfly fluttering over the gay parterres of New- 
port and Fifth Avenue. After setting her down as an 
irreclaimable worldling, accident may reveal to you a 
mine of unsuspected good in her character. The faults 
as well as the virtues of friends are often brought to light 
by the same roundabout process. The meanness which 
is successfully concealed from one man is unconsciously 
revealed to another. The surface amiability which mis- 
leads one observer is not so well maintained as to im- 
pose upon another. Sophia thinks Matilda an angel 
until informed by an. incautious friend of the latter that 



"FRIEND'S FRIENDS." 27 

she leads her maid an awful life. Smith ceases to think 
Jones a hero when told of his base ingratitude to Brown. 
Nor is it only as throwing light on a great deal that is 
dark in one's friends' characters that their friends merit 
notice. They can explain much that is perplexing and 
furnish the key to many riddles. They often know facts 
about your friends at the knowledge of which you could 
never arrive yourself. You are on intimate terms with 
a lady who persists in wearing a band of black velvet 
round her left wrist. After racking your brains for years 
in the vain attempt to solve the mystery, you come 
across another of the lady's intimate friends who explains 
it in a moment. She has seen a ghost who was ungal- 
lant enough to leave a scar upon her left arm. You 
could never understand why, on a certain da}' of the 
year, your trusted friend and adviser, old Surrebutter, 
invariably donned a suit of mourning and remained se- 
cluded in his room. The college friend with whom he 
sips his port on Christmas Day clears up the matter, some 
day or other, by telling you of a romantic passage in the 
veteran pleader's early life. One reads the lines of past 
suffering on some gentle face, and wonders what was the 
trouble that set the furrows there. Thereby hangs a tale 
which you may learn hereafter from the lips of some 
sympathizing confidante. What makes your soldier 
friend so simple and modest, your mitred friend so in- 
ordinately stiff and pompous? The consciousness of 
their humble origin — a secret which they may strive to 
conceal, but which is pretty sure to reach your ears at 
last. Why, among the circle of your intimates, is one 
man so nighty, another so puritanical, a third so strong 
a teetotaler? These are questions which you cannot 
answer yourself, but Which some one who has known 
the same person earlier or better than you may be able 



28 "FRIEND'S FRIENDS." 

to answer. It is safer, in short, in estimating the character 
of a given individual in its entirety, to assume nothing, 
and proceed by way of a regular induction. When 
three, four or five of his intimate friends, who have 
known him at different times and seen him in different 
situations, agree that he is good-tempered, selfish, brave, 
or mean, there can be little doubt that he is so. It is 
impossible, therefore, to know any one really well unless 
you know his surroundings and have some sort of ac- 
cess to his other intimate friends. 

A shrewd observer may turn his friend's friends to 
account in another way. They serve as a mirror in 
which the characteristics of all friendships are contin- 
ually being reflected. To watch the relations which ex- 
ist between two persons, one of whom you know well 
and the other only mediately, is no unprofitable amuse- 
ment. You see, in studying them, what causes tend to 
strengthen, weaken or dissolve friendship, the tact which 
cements it, the rocks on which shipwreck is most often 
made. The knowledge thus gained is a chart to steer 
by and avoid the quicksands in which many ardent pro- 
fessions of attachment are engulfed. The looker-on 
proverbially sees a great deal that escapes the notice of 
the principals, and easily detects the blunders by which 
the game is lost. When Damon and Pythias, fresh from 
college, agree to make the grand tour together, some 
cautious friend of the latter shakes his head and wonders 
to himself if it will answer. When, a year hence, they 
return by different routes, and a permanent coolness 
ensues, he is at no loss what conclusion to draw. But 
he profits by the warning, and registers a vow never to 
travel with a man whose friendship he really values. 
Many are the problems that are solved for him, as it 
were, at another's expense. Up to what point advice or 



"FRIEND'S FRIENDS." 29 

criticism may be hazarded, how to avoid the temptation 
to over-familiarity, on what footing to rest a friendship 
when the station is unequal — whether a Platonic one is 
possible between two young persons of different sexes, — 
these are points which, with many more, he discreetly 
leaves to be decided by the experience of those around 
him. In this way not only may the materials for a 
new treatise De Amdcitia, but much valuable knowledge 
of human nature, be acquired. 

It is an amiable impulse to wish to make one's friends 
acquainted with each other. " You must know So-and- 
so," people say, speaking of one whom they know in- 
timately to another equally dear. These transmitted 
friendships are by no means rare, and are sometimes 
attended with very fortunate results. Many happy mar- 
riages, for instance, annually grow out of them. The 
interest which sisters take in their brothers' friends has 
a natural tendency to ripen into love. Conversely, 
brothers often end by marrying their sisters' friends. 
But, as a general rule, it is a mistake to insist on two 
persons knowing each other merely because they both 
happen to know you. One of two things probably hap- 
pens : either they don't like each other, which is a dis- 
appointment, or they like each other too well, and you 
soon find yourself supplanted. 



WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS. 




HERE is nothing fixed, no duration, no vitality 
in the sentiments of women toward each other. 
iyp They are mere pretty bows of ribbons, and no 
**V>5 more. "Orestes and Pylades have no sisters." 
Certainly this is a hard saying, and yet most 
women, if they are honest, will confess that it is a 
true one. And, after all, we need not go very far to 
find a reason why women are not good friends with wo- 
men. They want diversity of character ; and it is upon 
this very diversity that the strongest friendships are 
built. The best friends are not mere reproductions of 
one another ; they are rather each other's complement. 
They are united not by an accidental identity of tastes 
or powers or pursuits, but by the assimilation, through 
the affections, of intellectual and moral differences. It is 
not so much that the character of either is changed, as 
that the characters of both are enlarged. Our friends 
are added to and become a part of ourselves, and we in 
turn are added to and become a part of our friends. 
An absolute resemblance is fatal to such a union; it 
leaves no room for the process of mutual adaptation. 
To bind people together there must be different though 
corresponding angles in their characters — recesses in which 

30 



WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS. 31 

the salient points of each may find shelter, projections 
which may fit into and fill up recesses. Without these 
they would be like pebbles in a wall, cemented by the 
force of interest, habit or circumstance, but having no 
coherence of their own. It is just this variety in which 
women are deficient. In all other respects they are of 
the stuff that friends are made of, and many of the 
qualifications for friendship they possess in a far higher 
degree than men. They have more self-sacrifice and 
less small selfishness, greater tenderness and greater 
tact, a quicker sympathy and a keener apprehension. 
But they are too much alike ever to be great friends. 
Somehow, women do not differ from women as men 
differ from men. Amidst all their innumerable diver- 
sities there is an underlying resemblance, something 
which resists analysis and sets calculation at defiance — 
something which you can neither explain nor account 
for, and which you must be content to call " a woman's 
way of looking at things." And how instinctively wo- 
men recognize and proclaim the truth of this ! No man 
ever professed to understand another man without either 
knowing him or caring for him or sympathizing with 
him, but this is just what women insist on doing for 
women every day of their lives. With them, commu- 
nity of sex supplies the place of all these qualifications. 
A woman claims to understand a woman simply be- 
cause she is a woman. 

Does it follow, therefore, that women are altogether 
shut out from friendship? Before acquiescing in this 
conclusion it may be as well to consider the possibility 
of such a sentiment existing between persons of differ- 
ent sexes. Certainly there is a prejudice against it. That 
men and women may feel for one another a real and 
strong affection without being either related or in love, 



32 WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS. 

is not perhaps altogether denied, but it is at most only 
half believed. And yet, if such relationships are possi- 
ble, there would be some present advantages in recog- 
nizing them. The benefit of woman's influence over 
men has long been among the most approved common- 
places of social morality, but we are greatly in want of 
some new medium through which it may make itself 
felt. In a less artificial society it acts naturally, and 
almost exclusively, by means of love and marriage, but 
it has now to adapt itself to a civilization which tends 
more and more to make very early marriages impossible 
except to the favored few, while at the same time the 
increased freedom of modern manners throws the sexes 
more together and allows of greater intimacy in their 
intercourse. If this intimacy is not suffered to take the 
form of friendship, if it is to be restricted to polite gen- 
eralities, and never permitted to wander beyond the re- 
gion of unmeaning compliments and equally unmeaning 
disclaimers, the influence of women over men will be 
simply injurious. Instead of making either better, it 
will only make both more frivolous ; and in proportion 
as the deeper and more serious feelings are thus ex- 
cluded from ordinary life will either make irregular 
channels for themselves or else die out altogether. Peo- 
ple who never venture below the surface must end by 
becoming superficial. Again, there is a change in the 
tone of men's friendships for one another which points 
in the same direction. They are not less firm or less 
lasting than they were some generations back, but they 
are less unreserved and less affectionate. Language 
which in the age of Queen Elizabeth Mas habitually 
used of and to men has now been so long used only of 
and to women that its original employment strikes us, 
even in the literature of the time, as something forced 



WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS. 33 

and unnatural. No man could speak to a friend now 
as Shakespeare or Sidney might have spoken to one. 
And the character of our confidence to our friends has 
undergone a corresponding change. We are not less 
sure of their sympathy, but we neither expect nor desire 
to have it put in words, and therefore we instinctively 
avoid giving the least excuse for its expression. Even 
the very terminology of our avowals is significant. Our 
every- day talk would not fall so naturally into slang if 
it were not that slang favors the reticence in which mod- 
ern sensitiveness loves to cloak itself. We are not reti- 
cent with women, and therefore with women we have 
no need to talk slang. When Clive Newcome pours 
out his passion for Ethel to Arthur Pendennis, all 
that he can say is, u Oh, Pen! I'm up another tree 
now." Mr. Thackeray has not recorded the terms 
of Pendennis's answer, but we have little doubt it 
was either " Hard lines for you, Clive," or perhaps, 
with a shade more of pathos, "It must be an aw- 
ful nuisance." Probably, when Clive talked to Laura, 
the language of both was less symbolical, and though 
Pendennis is not exactly an ideal confidant, we have 
no doubt she made a far better one than her husband. 
And let no one underrate this simple receptiveness, or 
think the faculty of listening heartily an unimportant 
one. At all events, Lord Bacon did not despise it when 
he described a friend as one " to whom you may impart 
griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and what- 
ever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil 
shrift or confession," and placed " the ease and discharge 
of the fullness of the heart which passions of all kinds 
do cause and induce " among the " principal fruits " of 
friendship. 

The objection most commonly urged against friend- 

c 



34 WOMEN'S FBIENDSHIPS. 

ship between the sexes is, in effect, that they are not 
what they profess to be. " Young men and women never 
stop at friendship," it is said: "they always end by 
falling in love." A very obvious way of meeting this 
objection is to be found in the formula, Well, what 
then? Supposing that the friends do end by falling in 
love, where is the harm of it? After all, friendship is 
not a bad stepping-stone to a warmer feeling. There are 
people, indeed, who seem to think that any long inti- 
macy between lovers is a positive evil — that the less 
they know of each other before they are engaged, and 
the less time they have to get to know each other after 
they are engaged, the better for all parties. But it is at 
least an open question wdiether friendship, and all that 
friendship implies — intimacy, esteem, affection, know- 
ledge of each other's characters, sympathy with each 
other's tastes, a share in each other's pursuits — is not a 
better preparation for marriage than an acquaintanceship 
in which the introduction is effected at a dinner-party,, 
and the proposal made at a picnic, while the intervening 
intercourse consists of three balls, a kettledrum, and a 
flower-show. Nor is there any conclusive evidence that 
friendships of this kind, necessarily and inevitably, lead to 
falling in love. Occasionally, it must be admitted, they 
do end in this way. The frontier line between sentiment 
and passion is sometimes so faintly traced that it is 
hardly recognized until it has been fairly crossed. And 
at present the rarity of the relationship, the difficulties 
which are often thrown in the way of its continuance, 
the discouragement it usually meets with, the very ex- 
cuses which are put forward to explain it, all tend to 
increase the probability of such a termination. Still, 
in spite of all these opposing influences, instances to the 
contrary are not very infrequent; and that they should 



WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS. 35 

be met with at all, when so little favored by external 
circumstances, is no slight proof of their inherent vi- 
tality. They occur often est perhaps in the case of 
cousins, between whom there is often the warmest and 
most affectionate intercourse, without a thought of any 
further connection. And yet, so far as the chances of 
marriage are concerned, friendships between cousins 
stand on exactly the same footing as friendships between 
strangers in blood. 

Both may lead to marriage, both sometimes do lead 
to marriage, and in this respect, at least, an objection 
which is valid against the one is equally valid against 
the other. Some persons, however, may be disposed to 
question the benefit of such relations, even if the danger 
of their transmutation into a stronger feeling is admitted 
to be exaggerated or imaginary. Will not the tendency 
of increased intimacy between the sexes be to make 
women masculine? The best antidote to this fear will 
be to keep in mind the foundation on which such a re- 
lationship is based. We have seen that women cannot 
find their friends among themselves, because they can- 
not supply one necessary requisite of all real friendship ; 
and any attempt on their part to divest themselves of 
their distinctive feminine characteristics would conse- 
quently involve the sacrifice of that very diversity of 
character which difference of sex was expected to secure. 
Men who seek in their friends the complement of them- 
selves are not likely to look for them among " strong- 
minded" women, who have forgotten that it is on their 
sex that every-day life depends for almost all it has of 
grace or beauty; or among fast young ladies, whose 
highest aim is to produce, as exactly as fashion (and a 
little more exactly than propriety) will allow, the most 
ephemeral and superficial characteristics of their male 



36 WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS. 

acquaintance. But, on the other hand, there is no 
greater mistake than to assume that to be womanly and 
to be frivolous are simply exchangeable ideas. A girl 
will be none the less feminine because she has some 
serious interests in life, none the less graceful because 
her tastes have a wider range than mere schoolroom ac- 
complishments, none the less attractive because she 
sympathizes, and to some extent shares, in pursuits of 
a graver kind. To make her a pleasant partner at a 
ball or a pleasant companion at a dinner-table it is not 
necessary that either of these duties should have occupied 
all her thoughts since the moment the invitation was 
accepted. Men are not considered unsuited for society 
or unable to bear their part in conversation because 
their education has had a wider aim than merely to 
prepare them for the drawing-room. 

Small talkers have no monopoly of small talk. And 
in like manner the hours a young lady spends over 
history or science will give purpose and interest to her 
mornings, without, in the least degree, unfitting her for 
the ornamental functions of the evening. 

A possible exposure to misrepresentation and unjust 
criticism is a more formidable obstacle than any we have 
mentioned. Women cannot disregard social opinion, 
even when it is irrational, and if friendships between the 
sexes were likely to be " talked about," it would be use- 
less to say anything in their favor. The persons who 
are best fitted for them would be just those who would 
most certainly hold themselves aloof from them. But 
in this respect the world gets rather hard measure. It 
is often charged with being censorious when, in reality, 
it is only impatient of absurdity. People who are talked 
about commonly deserve what they get. They may not 
be chargeable with any serious error, they may be wholly 



WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIPS. 37 

innocent of any bad intention, but they have been fool- 
ish, and their folly has met with its reward. In nine 
cases out of ten where appearances are much against a 
woman, it is her own fault that they have become so. 
The occasion for scandal is usually furnished, in the first 
instance, by the victims of it; and a little common sense 
on their part would have proved an effectual barrier 
against mischief-makers. But people who respect them- 
selves generally find that they have set the fashion of 
being respected, and a certain amount of decision in 
dealing with public opinion is often the surest way to 
conciliate it. The world is so far like heaven that it ad- 
mits of being taken by storm; it has so much of the 
nettle in it that it is safest to grasp it firmly. A friend- 
ship which is avowed without being obtrusive, and inde- 
pendent without being affected, which neither courts 
secresy nor cares to thrust itself into notice, will never 
be likely to provoke any injurious comments. At the 
worst, it is very doubtful whether a score of such inti- 
macies will give half the opportunities for scandal and 
misunderstanding which are often afforded by one " in- 
nocent " flirtation. At all events, we recommend this 
question to our readers as likely to furnish them with 
inexhaustible material for a whole season of croquet- 
ground discussion. 




LADIES' SOCIETY. 




HERE are some ladies who are beginning to com- 
plain, whether justly or unjustly, that the society 
of women is less prized by men of education and 
$% position than it used to be. As no ladies would 
venture to make this complaint who feared the 
obvious retort that probably those . only grumble who 
have ceased to be attractive, we may get rid at once of 
that easy mode of shelving what is, if well founded, a 
legitimate cause of regret. Women who know that they 
themselves please, and have pleased, and will please to 
the end of their days, alone dare to challenge criticism 
by making general remarks of this kind. Whether the 
assertion is true or untrue is exceedingly hard to say, 
but perhaps most persons would allow that there is at 
least enough to give it color. There are some obvious facts 
which tend to make it probable. Ladies may say that 
the real cause of the change lies in the altered habits of 
men. In the first place, clubs supply a society where 
every luxury is placed at the command of persons of 
moderate fortune, where friends are to be found day and 
night, and where men not- only have gilded drawing- 
rooms to go to and crimson satin to recline on, but may 
put their boots freely where they like, and can growl if 

38 



LADIES' SOCIETY. 39 

any one ventures to address them when they wish to be 
undisturbed. In the next place, smoking has greatly 
increased, and young men especially break up the do- 
mestic circle and quit their sisters and cousins in order 
to retire to a pipe. Keen-eyed mothers notice a peculiar 
nudge and faint motion of the eye, which their expe- 
rience informs them is the signal by which one young 
smoker intimates to another that a decent excuse must 
be found as soon as possible for sliding off to the den 
sacred to tobacco. That clubs and the Virginian weed 
do, as a matter of fact, make men less anxious for a 
home, and less anxious when at home to stay with their 
female relations, is, we think, highly probable. That 
they operate to a great extent in these directions, or that 
many men are permanently affected by them, is much 
more uncertain. The kind of man who really cares for 
a club is seldom a man who would, in any generation, 
have had a great taste for female society. In every 
period of history there have been old bachelors, and 
wise old bachelors, and good livers, and men who like 
to alternate work with unobtrusive ease and comfort. 
There must be other reasons on which the complaint is 
grounded if it is warranted, although these causes may 
contribute in some degree to produce the result attached 
to them. 

There is a cause on the side of the ladies which is, 
we submit, quite as powerful as clubs or smoking ; and 
that is the imitation of men to which the women attach 
so much value. They copy the language, the sentiments 
and the habits of men as far as they are able. Even in 
the mouths of girls expressions are now heard which we 
do not believe their mothers would have dreamed of 
using at the same age. They do not exactly swear, but 
they run near it. There is a story of a Highland game- 



40 LADIES' SOCIETY. 

keeper who went fishing with one of the young gentle- 
men of the house. This young sportsman had the luck 
to hook a very nice salmon in a very nice pool. The 
fish was game, and so was the fisherman, and they had 
a neat little tussel, which ended in the salmon getting 
off. The disappointed angler expressed his disappoint- 
ment in a hurst of maledictions that came from the bot- 
tom of his young heart. In the evening the gamekeeper 
recounted the history of the salmon to a friend of the 
angler. The friend, picturing the scene to himself and 
contemplating the probable result, asked whether Mr. 
Arthur didn't swear a little when the fish broke away. 
The gamekeeper quietly replied, "Well, sir, he was just 
aiming at it." With such admirable reserve and mod- 
eration did he hint at the terrific outburst of his young 
master. In the same way, and with a more literal ac- 
curacy, it might be said that young ladies are "just 
aiming" at men's conversation. Everything is "aw- 
fully jolly" or "a deuced bore." But, however defen- 
sible such language may be, very few men think it 
attractive. Men do not want women to talk as they 
themselves do, but to keep up the standard of elegance, 
propriety and purity. Fast girls, apart from their more 
or less of good looks, are to men only like feebler 
men, and the sooner they get this into their silly little 
heads the better for them and society. A woman can 
never, or very seldom, answer the purpose of a male 
companion to a man. It is in vain that she talks slang 
and is knowing about horses and dallies with a cigarette 
and lets the conversation turn on doubtful characters. 
Men can always beat her at this kind of game. And even 
when a lady is far too right-minded and well-conducted 
to go into these excesses of heedless immodesty, yet if 
she in any way talks or acts like a man, she so far repels 



LADIES 1 SOCIETY. 41 

men. Unless women offer in their society something 
different from that which men have without them, why 
should they expect that men will stay with them ? 

But there is a much more powerful reason than clubs 
or smoking or slang talk from female lips for this in- 
difference to ladies' society. The great, general and in- 
creasing love of pleasure lies at the bottom of this sepa- 
ration of the sexes. Everybody is not only prepared to 
seek and to have the greatest amount of amusement, but 
gets it. A thousand things combine to spread our taste 
for pleasure. The prosperity of the country and of the 
greater part of the civilized world makes the command 
of the means of pleasure tenfold what it used to be. 
Railways bring together numbers of persons in the same 
spot, and give us the tastes of other countries in addi- 
tion to those of our own. We work harder, and have a 
thirst for increased recreation to reward us. Men have 
got into the habit of going where it is pleasantest to go, 
and it unfortunately happens that parties where ladies 
are present are generally so constructed that there is 
little positive pleasure, and often much positive pain, in 
attending them, whereas parties where men alone are 
present are generally lively and successful. Of course, 
all heavy dinners of a public or semi-public kind are not 
to be reckoned among men's parties. But where friends 
meet for the purpose of dining or passing the evening 
together, the party is generally pleasanter without ladies. 
Why is this? In the first place, there is very much 
more comfort ; and secondly, men take more trouble to 
get together a suitable set and to have a convenient 
number. When women complain that ladies' society is 
not so much valued as it ought to be, let them think of 
what, according to the present fashion, is offered to men 
at parties where there are ladies too. The dinner is very 

4* 



42 LADIES' SOCIETY. 

often one in which the object of the host and hostess is 
to see the greatest number of their acquaintances. The 
meal is cut after the very straitest pattern, and is ex- 
actly like the last ten dinners which the diner-out has 
eaten. He is wedged between two solid blocks of crin- 




oline, which spread over him and eclipse him. As he 
feebly puts out his arms through the maze, like an insect 
protruding its antennae, he is in constant fear lest he 
should damage the fabrics near him, or fail in conveying 
to his mouth the precarious morsels which he cuts" off 
by a series of happy shots with hi3 knife and fork. It 



LADIES' SOCIETY. 43 

is very seldom that these masses of handsome clothing 
have anything to say, or will accept any remark, except 
on a cut-and-dried subject like the opera or the weather, 
without giving it to be understood that their answers 
are to be taken without prejudice. When men dine 
together they make up a party of six or eight ; they take 
care, if they have any sense, that the dishes are few, but 
all eatable, and that everything is good and in the right 
order. They say what they think and what they like. 
They have plenty of room, they are comfortable, they 
are companionable. Let ladies look on this picture and 
on that. 

Evening gatherings are still more against the ladies. 
Balls apart — and they only concern dancing men — the 
evening amusements of private life are terribly dull. 
This is not anybody's fault. Hundreds of hot people 
put into a big room, without any object of meeting, with 
nothing to say to each other, and only one wild wish 
boiling up in their hearts — the burning, feverish desire 
to be anywhere else and to get the thing over — are not 
likely to contribute much to each other's happiness. 
The evening gatherings of men are rather different. In 
a large, airy room ten or twenty or thirty men drop in 
at any hour they like, light a cigar and fall at once into 
a desultory, but still easy and continuous conversation. 
If it is pretty lively they stay, if it is dull they slope off. 
They sit or stand in the easiest position, see the newest 
lion, hear the sweetest story, drop into a chat with one 
acquaintance after another, and have no guide to stay- 
ing or going but their own sense of entertainment. In 
Utopia, possibly, the human mind may be so well regu- 
lated, and the male mind may be so deeply impressed 
with the advantages of female society, that men may 
prefer to an evening gathering of this sort the heat, the 



44 LADIES' SOCIETY. 

crush, the whirl of a Reception or an At Home. But in 
the present corrupt state of the human heart the Recep- 
tion has no chance. This is not saying that men dislike 
or despise female society, but that they cling to what 
pleases them, and the arrangements of society are such 
that the pleasure is greatest where the women are not. 
That men's dinners and men's evenings are so much 
pleasanter may depend, not on the absence of women, 
but on the superior art with which men, knowing clearly 
what they want, set themselves to get it. 

Society is on so large a scale now, and every one with 
anything like an establishment has necessarily so large 
an acquaintance to whom it is necessary to render some 
kind of civility, that large miscellaneous gatherings 
must go on, although they give so much trouble and so 
little pleasure to every one. But that ladies cannot give 
parties of a private and sociable kind, where the pleasure 
shall be as great or greater than that felt at men's par- 
ties, need not be believed until the experiment is fairly 
tried. Why do men's parties succeed? Because they 
are small, in cool rooms, with the right quantities of the 
right things, and because comfort is studied. Why are 
the parties at which ladies are present so little cared for ? 
Because the people are not assorted, because the dishes 
are absurdly numerous and without invention, because 
the dresses of the women choke up the table, because 
everything is hot, stale and formal. In the parlor the 
ladies are all collected, like a group of Egyptian idols, ' 
in a solemn circle, behind which the men stand, until 
at last a victim is selected to give that signal for conver- 
sation which is called " a little music." It may be re- 
marked that many people scarcely ever seem to converse 
with anything like freedom unless under cover of the 
piano. Sometimes, if the furniture permits an approach, 



LADIES' SOCIETY. 45 

one of the " Egyptian idols " will thaw a little so long as 
her sociability is screened by a brilliant burst of sound. 
The thanks which remind the performer that she has 
done her duty, and that some one else is to be turned 
on to supply the requisite volume of music-power, gen- 
erally bring to a simultaneous end the conversation she 
has created. This is not to be called ladies 1 society ; ex- 
cepting among intimate friends, there is little that de- 
serves to be called ladies' society. When there is such 
a society, we shall see whether it is not far too attractive 
for clubs or smoking to prevail against it. Where there 
really is something like ladies' society, as there is in 
large country-houses or among friendly neighbors, no 
one can say that the society of women is not keenly 
relished. 




NEIGHBORS. 



@f!F we take the word "neighbor" in its common 
,41 sense, as meaning the man whose fields join 
Ji our own, whose house lies within an easy walk, 
whose interest and business and general manner 
of life come in contact with our own in a hun- 
dred ways, it is a very difficult lesson indeed to learn to 
love him. It is very easy to show mercy to him, to help 
him if he falls into poverty, to pick him up if he lies 
wounded by the wayside ; it is very easy to be on good 
terms with him, to avoid all occasions of quarreling 
with him, to join with him in supporting common local 
interests against the rest of the world. It is much easier 
to love a man who lives ten miles off; easier still to 
love a man who lives a hundred miles off. The man 
who lives ten miles off you need not see often ; the man 
who lives a hundred miles off you need not see at all, 
unless you really delight in his company. But your 
neighbor you must see often; you must come across 
him at meetings of business and meetings of society ; 
you must be civil to him and glad to see him, and )^et 
you may feel it exceedingly hard work to love him. Or, 
on the other hand, you may really wish to love him if 
you could only manage it, but the fact of his being your 

46 



NEIGHBORS. 47 

neighbor stands in the way. You feel that if he lived a 
hundred miles off, or even ten miles off, he might be- 
come the friend who is on your soul. But he lives close 
by 3'ou, and the living close by you is fatal. You would 
fain love him, but you cannot ; you wish to make him a 
friend, but fate decrees that he shall remain only a 
neighbor. The difficulty, then, in loving your neighbor 
is twofold: neighborhood condemns you to a sort of 
Procrustean mediocrity of affection; it cuts your emo- 
tions unnaturally short in one case, and pulls them out 
to an unnatural length in another. It condemns you to 
stand in the same outward relation toward people with 
whom you would gladly be in a closer relation and to- 
ward people with whom you would like best to be in no 
relation at all. It> is hard to have to be civil when you 
would rather be nothing ; it is hard to be only civil when 
you would be something more. Neighbors are in some 
sort like kinsfolk. You choose your friends as you 
choose your wife, but your neighbors and your kinsfolk 
are given you without your choosing. In both cases 
you are put into a certain relation to a person whether 
he personally commends himself to your liking or not. 
In both cases the relation, though a kindly one in itself, 
is one fertile beyond others in occasions of dispute. The 
kinsman is worse, in that his relation is more intimate, 
and that he is harder to shake off if you do not like 
him; he is better in that, if you really do like him, 
it is easier to make a friend of him than it is of your 
neighbor. But kindred and neighborhood agree in be- 
ing alike unavoidable dispensations of Providence, while 
friendship, like marriage, is a deliberate act of human 
free will. 

Neighbors, then, fall into two classes — those whom, if 
you had your own way, you would get rid of altogether, 



48 NEIGHBORS. 

and those with whom, if you had your own way, you 
would advance to the rank of friends. On the former 
class we need not enlarge ; the weariness of having to 
go through various offices of civility toward people for 
whom you really do not care speaks for itself. The 
other case is more subtle : Why is mere neighborhood an 
impediment to friendship ? That mere neighborhood is 
such an impediment will be easily seen by a little thought. 
Near neighbors may often be intimate friends, but, if so, 
they are not friends by virtue of their neighborhood, 
though their neighborhood ma} T have been the occasion 
of their friendship. They may have been, through this 
neighborhood, thrown together in early youth, and so 
put into much the same relation as that of school or 
college friends. But this is something more than mere 
neighborhood. That mere neighborhood tells the other 
way is easily seen by contemplating the relations between 
two people whose relations are those of neighborhood 
pure and simple. Let us suppose two men, one of whom 
settles in the neighborhood of the other, without any 
previous acquaintance between them. Be they never so 
well disposed toward one another, be they never so really 
congenial to one another, they will have a greater diffi- 
culty in contracting a real mutual friendship than if 
they had met under any other circumstances. If you 
meet a man at the house of a common friend, or if you 
pick him up at a scientific or antiquarian meeting, you are 
far more likely to make a friend of him than if he comes 
and settles within a mile of you. 

In the former case, the two men need never meet again 
or communicate with one another in any way except by 
mutual consent ; they are therefore not likely to make 
arrangements for any further intercourse unless they 
really are mutually charmed. But between the neighbors 



NEIGHBORS. 49 

there is a necessity for a certain amount of intercourse, 
and this necessity stands in the way of a greater and 
more familiar amount. You are placed toward your 
attractive neighhors in the same artificial relation in 
which you are placed toward other neighbors toward 
whom you are quite indifferent, and this at once pro- 
duces a certain restraint. There is a physical barrier 
placed between you. The necessity of knocking at a 
door, of asking whether Mr. A. is at home, of being 
shown into a room and waiting till Mr. A. appears, is a 
very chilling business. It is something like the pre- 
liminaries of a sermon. 

So the ceremonial call and the ceremonial dinner 
remain ceremonies; it needs an unusual frankness of 
disposition on one side or on both to throw any life 
into an intercourse of which they are necessary por- 
tions. Mere neighborhood in itself excludes those par- 
ticular forms of intercourse which most nourish real 
friendship. You do not ask your near neighbor to stay 
in your house, and you seldom have any need to write 
to him anything worthy to be called a letter. But if 
you do not stay in a man's house or have him stay in 
yours, you see him only behind bolts and bars; you 
know nothing of his inner life; you do not know how 
he spends his evenings or his mornings. You perhaps 
do not even know the very hours of his meals ; you are 
afraid to go near him, except when business or ceremony 
demands it, for fear of interrupting some family arrange- 
ments of which you can know nothing. Put the two 
men for a few days under the same roof, and all this 
constraint vanishes. The physical bolts and bars are 
removed, and if there is any real communion of soul 
between the two people, the moral ones soon follow. 
They live together, eat together, walk or ride together ; 
5 D 



50 NEIGHBORS. 

they have for a season all things in common; if they 
are suited to one another, they take care to meet again ; 
if they are not suited to one another, they take care not 
to meet again. Greater steps toward permanent friend- 
ship may be made by spending two days in the same 
house than by living for seven years in two houses within 
a bowshot of one another. 

Neighborhood, however, it should be noticed, may 
easily form the basis of friendship, but in a form which 
at once shows how great a hindrance neighborhood, 
while it remains neighborhood, is to friendship. Let us 
suppose that the relation of neighborhood comes to an 
end — that one of the neighbors is removed to the dis- 
tance of ten miles, or, better still, of a hundred miles. 
It not unfrequently happens in such a case that friend- 
ship, like the perfect insect, is developed out of neighbor- 
hood as its grub. The two men find that they really 
cared for one another — that they have really lost some- 
thing by their separation. They make up the loss by 
the most effectual means — by occasional letters and occa- 
sional visits. The former neighbor is now promoted to 
the rank of a friend ; you now see something of his real 
life, and he sees something of yours, without the inter- 
vention of doors, knockers, cards and servants. One 
counterbalancing gain to the manifest loss of several 
changes of dwelling-place is that you may, when you 
have departed from each place, find that you have grown 
there a little crop of friends out of what seemed at first 
to be the barren ground of mere neighborhood. 

And if we may venture to tread on more delicate 
ground — ground which of course we know nothing about 
except what we learn from lady-novelists — we should 
guess a priori that what we have said with regard to 
friendship must apply with tenfold force to love. Of 



NEIGHBORS. 51 

course, a man may fall in love anywhere, but is he not 
much better off, will not his love-making be carried on 
much more to his own satisfaction, if the object of it 
does not live within two or three miles of his house? 
Suppose a man in the stage of love-making, or, what is 
more terrible, in the stage which goes immediately be- 
fore love-making, with all the restraints of mere neigh- 
borhood interposed between him and his beloved. No 
doubt, when matters are fully understood and owned 
on both sides, a little ingenuity — we of course infer this 
only from what we have read in books — can devise ways 
of meeting which dispense with the ministrations of 
the door-bell and the servant. But how is it when Miss 
A. is much more to Mr. B. than any other lady, but 
when she has not yet confessed that Mr. B. is much 
more to her than any other gentleman? What is the 
poor man to do? Must he waylay the door on the 
chance, of a fair apparition issuing from it, or must he 
go boldly and ring, and ask to see the honored parents 
whom he has no wish to see, on the chance of getting a 
word with the retiring daughter as well ? We leave such 
knotty points to others, but we should think that this 
particular stage at least must be got over at much greater 
advantage when the two performers meet under a com- 
mon roof. It has always struck us that no opportunity 
for love-making can be so perfect as when a man takes 
his college friend home with him in the vacation. The 
stranger is no stranger at all ; dear Charlie's dear friend 
is at once at home ; everybody does all that can be done 
to welcome him and please him ; either his friend must 
be unhappily sisterless, or he must be himself a monster 
of ingratitude and stony-heartedness, if he does not fall 
in love with his friend's sister. If he be a human 
creature at all, he will drift into an attachment, without 



52 NEIGHBORS. 

knowing anything about it till it is too late to draw back. 
A few incidental minutes in a garden will do more than 
endless calls and dinners ; nay, we should think — speak- 
ing of course a priori — that even a ball-room itself is less 
favorable than a succession of shady walks, with green 
grass below and green leaves above, climbing by gentle 
zigzags to the top of a gentle hill. Such spots seem as 
if Nature and Art had specially conspired to adapt them 
to the purpose. Meet alone by some lucky chance, lag 
casually behind the rest of the party, and the thing is 
done. The terms and vacations which follow become 
mere alternations of sweet letters and sweeter meetings, 
where happy accidents need no longer be looked out for. 
No need for bells to intervene at all, though we can 
conceive some venerable and faithful servant putting 
on a smile of solemn satisfaction at the arrival of the 
stranger who has become something like a son of the 
house. 



HERMITS. 




!f| HERE is an ever-increasing difficulty, as time rolls 
i on, in bringing ourselves to realize the value, or 
even to appreciate the meaning, of many once 

familiar and well-established habits of thought. 

Such old-world virtues as that of early rising and 
early going to bed, as well as that of courting unneces- 
sary hardships through contempt for the luxury of a 
fire except within certain arbitrary dates, or of an extra 
coat at Christmas, may still form the pride of elderly 
gentlemen, generally of the class characterized by Mr. 
Dickens as the " buttoned-up " order. But what it is 
that backs up their stiffness or justifies their self-com- 
placency remains as enigmatical as the sphinx to a more 
indulgent and easier-going generation. Whether feigned, 
however, or real, the passion for the life of the solitary or 
recluse apart from the sinful and cruel world is a thing 
no longer capable of revival, either in literature or in 
that drama of real life of which literature is but the 
contemporary mirror — no longer to be vapored about in 
airy verse or stilted prose, or exemplified by living speci- 
mens of the historical denizens of the cavern or the 
hermitage. 

As a solace under physical or mental dolors, as a 

5 * 53 



54 HERMITS. 

remedy against fretfulness or discontent, or as a balm 
for wounded or disappointed affection, it must be con- 
fessed that all faith in the efficacy of solitude is exploded. 
It is not the way in which any pathologist would now 
minister to a mind diseased, nor that to which our 
blighted beings rush for the alleviation of their bruised 
spirits. Our wounded fawns no longer seek out for 
themselves a lonely covert where they may lay down 
their sore and outraged hearts, or shut themselves up to 
die of the slow agony of blighted hope. We no more 
see the jilted sufferer go "moaning about like a sick 
cow." She is deep in a whirl of flirtations under the 
very nose of her supposed murderer. She is off with a 
lively party on a fashionable tour. The man or woman 
who should shut up his or herself outright under such 
circumstances would be set down at once as a humbug 
or a lump of affectation, if not suspected by his or her 
friends of a latent unsoundness of mind, and treated ac- 
cordingly. Roland would not long, in these days, enjoy 
the luxury of gazing at his lost love's window without 
himself having to exchange the solitude of his tower for 
the cheerful though guarded circle of some certificated 
asylum. One cause of change of temperament which so 
emphatically characterizes our times is the greatly in- 
creased degree in which the civilization of our age has 
come to depend upon external and material elements. In 
the face of the vast accession of ideas through discovery 
and travel, the increase of luxury and comfort, the facil- 
ities of locomotion and the corresponding desire of change, 
it is simply impossible that the internal or mental ele- 
ments of character should retain the same share in 
making up the round of life and thought. Those tan- 
gible and outward things become more and more indis- 
pensable to the soul, and in case of any disturbance of 



HERMITS. 55 

the economy of the mind and heart it is to external 
medicines like these that recourse is had for relief, rather 
than to the healing powers of Nature in silence, solitude 
and repose. 

When the mind is suffering from the exhaustion of 
overwork, the faculties jaded by thought, the feelings 
wounded or unstrung by some conflict or blow, relief is 
instinctively sought in exercise in some counter direc- 
tion, which, by inducing the action of an opposite class 
of energies or emotions, shall give ease to the local strain 
and restore the lost balance of the organism. Instinct 
here leads as surely as philosophical reasoning itself to 
a psychological principle analogous to the law of rota- 
tion of crops in practical agriculture. If wild and nox- 
ious weeds spring up to fill the void in active and 
profitable culture, so do loose and unwholesome habits 
show themselves in the otiose and solitary dreamer. So 
far from isolation from the objects, interests and wants 
of society tending to exclude selfish and egotistical feel- 
ings or a peevish and envious frame of mind, all experi- 
ence shows it to be precisely in these that the recluse 
betrays the morbid influence of an unnatural pressure 
upon self. Inevitably, self must become more and more 
to him continually. His mind, narrowed more and 
more by the exclusion of the world without, centres to 
a point. His feelings stiffen into cramped and petty 
ways. The millstones of the mind, for want of being 
fed with substantial grain, chafe and wear each other 
out. The truth is, the human mind, as we see it consti- 
tuted at least, becomes less and less capable of subsist- 
ing on its own interior capital of thought and feeling. 
Even animals who, in the course of nature, support 
themselves for months upon their own fat, come forth 
from their winter fast sadly the worse for their solitude 



56 HERMITS. 

and hybernation. A very superior man may, indeed, 
isolate himself, or be involuntarily isolated, from his 
kind for an indefinite period on some lofty mission or 
in the execution of some great but unsuccessful purpose, 
and come back to the world with bright eye and unflag- 
ging spirit. 

But it is only a superior mind that can undergo this 
process without the intellect deteriorating and the whole 
faculties of the soul giving way to moth and rust. The 
mind of a more common order will inevitably vegetate 
or grow vicious. There is no middle point. Such a 
mind will take its tone and hue from the tame and color- 
less existence around it, and gradually part with all that 
gives to the character and bearing their light and grace 
and versatile activity. In that contact of soul with soul 
which exerts, as it were, electric influence upon the mind, 
and through the mind is reflected back upon the very 
countenance, Nature seems to have made a provision 
against that slowly-sapping process which condemns the 
intellect to dullness, the heart to egotism, the spirit to 
ennui. It may be owing more to a happy instinct than 
to any philosophical chain of reasoning that society in 
later times shows its preference for the social over the 
solitary tendencies in its ideal of the comfort and well- 
being of man. 




VISITS AND REVISITS. 




tude. 



HE subject of visits perhaps deserves a more care- 
ful and deliberate examination than has as yet 
been attempted. Even the call, prologue and 
epilogue to the visit, comprises, as Count Smorl- 
tork said, a subject of no inconsiderable magni- 
When a lady's visiting-list reaches to some five 
hundred names, it becomes evident that a considerable 
amount of business energy, not to mention strategy and 
statesmanship, is called into requisition. It is a happy 
circumstance that there are so many people who prefer re- 
ceiving visitors even en masse to making a tour among their 
own friends. This is necessary to restore the balance in 
the case of those who are the recipients, without being 
the bestowers, of hospitality. But we are now, in the 
first instance, discussing not the donors but the recipi- 
ents of hospitality. And herein great is the difference 
between the visit and the revisit. A great deal depends 
on who you are and on the place whither you are going. 
You may be a man of the world on whom invitations 
are showered in the prettiest notes, or it may even be 
that so commonplace a matter as a visit may, in the 
stress of business, be a somewhat rare event. De Boots 
tells that his invitations into the country would take 

57 



58 VISITS AND BEVISITS. 

him three years to clear off. Other men of the De Boots 
stamp have made the same remark. But the remark, 
though true, involves a fallacy. I grant that if they 
went from one place to another in chronological order, 
it would take them three years to get through the lot. 
But the invitation that holds good for this season by no 
means holds good for next. And let De Boots get en- 
gaged to some girl, especially in a wrong set, or be cut 
off by a cantankerous uncle — not to mention heavier 
possible misfortunes — and he will be altogether excused 
from putting in an appearance. For myself, I approve 
intensely of the theory and practice of visits. Some 
people indeed carry the taste to a rabid extent, and look 
to them for the cheerfulness that they should only find 
in the balance and adjustment of their own minds. It is 
a good thing for the heavy-weighted man of business 
that he should be able to get away into the pure air 
and pure thoughts of the country for a day or two, and 
a good thing for the budding maiden that she should 
come out into the world and see her friends for a month 
or two. 

How often is that guest-chamber adorned with all the 
adornments of a polished home; the bookshelves well 
lined ; the writing-table well furnished ; the arm-chairs 
ample ; the couch soft and yielding ; the flowers and pic- 
tures carefully bestowed ! You make your first visit with 
a curious mixed feeling. That is all anticipation which by 
and by will be reality. How unfamiliar seem those grounds 
on which hereafter you will dwell with fond recollection ! 
And that cottage with the clambering roses and the low 
verandah and the croquetted lawn is a momentary pic- 
ture now, but presently it will be a reality, and ever after a 
reality that abides. Sometimes in my wanderings I have 



VISITS AND REVISITS. 59 

passed such a dwelling, and I have amused myself by 
picturing to my mind what kind of beings the inmates 
might be j and time, in its whirligig of changes, has made 
me know the dwelling well of which I had once caught 
a pleasing transitory glimpse. I confess I have been 
disappointed at times. That arcadian bower, with its 
imagined sylph-like fairy for its haunting "minister," 
turned out to be the abode of a dogmatical old gentle- 
man with a Dutch love for tulips, and who prided him- 
self on his early cabbages. At other times one's best 
anticipations have been realized, if not in beauty, at 
least in goodness ; which, after all, is best. Yet it is odd 
for the first time to pass within the shadow of hospitable 
doors, perhaps having never seen your host, and with 
only his kind letter of invitation as your voucher. With 
a little practice you become utterly callous, and your 
mental attitude is that of amused attention to see what 
is going on. There are nervous people, I believe, ladies 
especially, who always feel uncomfortable till strangeness 
wears away, and are troubled with a headache while the 
strangeness lasts. But you, my well-seasoned friend — 
like the imperturbable gentleman who, hearing that his 
hotel was on fire, directed the waiter when the smoke 
should reach number twenty to bring him his shaving- 
water — are the passive recipient of impressions. You 
wonder whether the womenkind are pleasant, whether 
there will be much visiting, if there is shooting or fish- 
ing to be had, and so on. Yet there is always a notion 
of strangeness, a spice of adventure, in the first visit, even 
to the most hardened worldling, so different to the feel- 
ing of au revoir. 

But how different is the revisit when the au revoir is 
fulfilled — when you come back once more, pleased, to 
those well pleased to see you ! You are shown into the 



60 VISITS AND REVISITS. 

room which is called your room. You perceive at once, 
with grateful feelings, that your old tastes have been 
recollected and attended to. You fling yourself down 
on your sofa with a sense of rest and ownership. In 
the same feeling you possess yourself of the lawn and 
drawing-room, the outside and inside of the dwelling 
where you can really feel at home. In the evening you 
talk about the eldest son George, who is at college, and 
discuss his chances, or inquire after the young bride 
of the family, how she likes the neighborhood where 
she has settled down. And in the morning, forgetful 
of your many letters and that pressing business, you 
saunter away hour after hour listening to music or 
receiving gentle confidences. Lord Kochester said that 
after all Sauntering was Charles the Second's true mis- 
tress; and she is indeed a Dulcinea of whose sweet, 
beguileful ways much enamored talk might be made. 
I know some of the cleverest people in the world who 
are smitten even to madness with the passion of saun- 
tering. I always taste of its dangerous delights on the 
occasion of the revisit. But presently one has to brace 
up the moral energies, if only to take a farewell of those 
with whom one has enjoyed that sweetest of all pleas- 
ures, that of exquisite companionship, with feelings like 
those with which Dante and Byron watched the first 
sunset at sea. 

The other day I climbed a lofty steep, the summit 
forming a landmark for half the country and for sailors 
out at sea, of a long range of hills. It was surmounted 
by a dark grove, sombre and Druidical. It was eleven 
years since I stood there last — eleven years, changeful, 
active, momentous. The external panoramic landscape 
was all the same. Perhaps a warmer color was given to 
the nearer fields by the Italian clover, and here the axe 



VISITS AND BE VISITS. 61 

had been busy and the woodland thinned. Otherwise, 
all the landscape, until it became undistinguishable as 
the plain melted into the horizon, or was closed by 
the blue marginal line of sea, or was shut in by the 
hills, showed unchanged, but so changed ! The farms 
and homesteads, the green, narrow path, the white high- 
ways, the halls embowered in foliage, the curling smoke 
from slender hamlet, and the canopy of cloud overhang- 
ing city and large town, showed the immutability of 
outward things contrasted with man's Protean nature, 
and his unmade and remade form and nature. There 
came two maidens past, city girls, unless my eyes de- 
ceived me, with their sweethearts. That ancient form 
of amusement is always as fresh as it is old. I like 
those girls, because I think it argues good taste that they 
should come away to this lonely romantic spot, perhaps 
for the rare holiday, instead of going to some place of 
city or suburban amusement. Presently there rides by 
a farmer, heavy and hearty, with snowy hairs. He 
draws up and slackens rein, well pleased to be garrulous. 
I thought of the changes that had passed since I last 
climbed those breezy slopes. There was the splendid 
belle of our party, tall and bounding as a roe, full of 
gayety and fun, and she has lately retired to a secluded 
life. All, my Amanda ! through what vicissitudes and 
sorrows must you have passed to have attuned your mind 
to a final change like that ! That opulent banker, who 
seemed a very Croesus, has failed and, financially speak- 
ing, has "gone to the dogs." The boy of our party has 
married, and his children are coming on. It was quite 
a relief when I descended the hill and sought an an- 
cient hall through the well-remembered park. In their 
freshness and verdure the woods wore their sempiternal 
beauty, and on the walls the divine sunset of Claude 

6 



62 VISITS AND REVISITS. 

had not turned a color paler. Nor had that youthful 
warrior of Vandyke changed a hair. 

I so well remember going back to an old cathedral city, 
which I had not seen for many years since I lived there as 
a boy. I confess it was with a deep emotion that I came 
back after the absence of many years. During these years 
I had been residing in a sequestered country district, and 
my memory, aided by my imagination, had adorned the 
old city with every degree of architectural magnificence. 
That had been a pitiful Hegira when I had been com- 
pelled to leave it ; and no pilgrim ever resorted to the 
holy places under more intense feeling than when I 
returned to the Zion of my youth. I remember so well 
that it was a moonlight night when I reached the sta- 
tion. In my childhood the railway system had been a 
new invention here, and the railway system had termi- 
nated at this point. I remember how, as a child, it had 
been my delight to come down to the station on half 
holidays to watch the arriving and departing trains. 
The travelers seemed so business-like and independent 
who came and went ; and I used to wonder if the time 
would ever come when I too should go forth behind the 
iron horse to penetrate into the dim Unknown. At the 
present time this station, or congeries of stations, is a 
terminus for several lines of railway, but I still traced 
that primordial station amid the accretion thereto of sev- 
eral other large buildings. I wandered for hours and 
hours in that moonlight night through the silent and de- 
serted city. Somehow or other, the streets which to my 
imagination had seemed interminable and grand, were very 
rapidly traversed, and had shrunk into modified dimen- 
sions. The place seemed strangely altered. I sought 
out the next morning my former home. For years past 
it had appeared to my imagination as a kind of feudal 



VISITS AND REVISITS. 63 

castle, and I am afraid I had so described it to my 
youthful companions. It was a very good house, old 
and solid ; and I maintain that an ancient arch with a 
low, massive oak door really furnished a solid substruc- 
ture for my airy fiction; but, on the whole, I pro- 
nounced that the house, especially since it had been 
allowed to fall very considerably into dilapidation, was 
decidedly inferior. Close by was a place called " The 
Alley," a private yard with a right of way, where as 
schoolchildren we had been allowed to amuse ourselves. 
Formerly it had seemed to me an airy and most spacious 
domain, but I now saw with disgust that three strides 
and a jump would clear it. The violence of the reac- 
tion from exaggerated recollections was very great. If 
hitherto I had been looking at objects through a mag- 
nifying lens, I was now looking at them through a 
diminishing lens. It took me several " revisits " before I 
could accurately adjust my mental vision, and, allow- 
ing both for exaggeration and depreciation, could do this 
city justice. 

To talk philosophically, this is the great use of our 
" revisits :" that they enable us to test the inaccurate rea- 
soning and observation and hasty generalizations of 
youth. But most curious of all in the revisit is the re- 
newed knowledge of persons. In the particular case I 
am mentioning, after the absence of many years, I came 
back still quite a young man, and I was able to tell a 
very fine young woman that, as a matter of fact, she had 
been my earliest love. These favorable conditions have, 
of course, ceased to exist. I think of Byron's lines: 

"If I should meet thee 
After long years, 
How should I greet thee? — 
With silence and tears." 



64 VISITS AND REVISITS. 

But if, when a Byronic hero meets her, to find her 
thin and sallow, with an affected intonation of voice, and 
a general rigor and precision in personal appearance, 
then the Byronic hero instinctively discards the silence 
and the tears, and falls back on the ordinary greetings 
of society. After a certain time a period often comes in 
which no amount of time makes an appreciable change. 
I can conscientiously say that I have known persons in 
whom the lapse of three and thirty years, the lapse of 
a generation, had made no appreciable change. They 
are brought to a state of solidarity, and the fluent lines 
have been hardened into a rigid immobility. In this 
case I had been living in close contact, and had not been 
able to see with eyes sharpened by a long separation. 
But it is altogether different in those years when the 
changes are most rapid. I remember well a most hos- 
pitable house in which there was a bevy of fair chil- 
dren. The little loves ! the laughing, smiling, curly, 
graceful, happy children ! the musical ripple of laughter, 
the frank confidences, the unchecked glee, the rapt, 
eager attention to a fairy tale or story ! Such a glorious 
cluster of child-lives was there in the .old days ! But 
eight years passed away, and mighty changes happened. 
The rank was thinned — both eldest and youngest had 
passed away. But as I entered that familiar drawing- 
room and saw father and mother as in the days- of yore, 
hardly a line furrowed or a hair silvered, a bevy of tall, 
stately damsels sailed in, imperial and august. With 
much graciousness they remembered me in the days of 
old, and the} 7 treated me as if the old chain of associa- 
tions were unbroken ; but for all that, I knew that it was 
broken and the charm of the old times gone. I could 
no longer dance the grapes before the rosebud lips or 
fold them to my embrace to listen to my stories. Me 



VISITS AND REVISITS. 65 

then, much musing, do these revisits sadly please. 
There is something sad about them when the children 
have grown into stately maidens, or the stately maidens 
have become careworn matrons ; when neighborhoods 
that used to be lonely and solitary are bought up by 
speculators and are overrun by brick villas ; but still, 
if you are adhesive in your attachments, you cannot 
help haunting them again and again. " To-morrow to 
fresh fields and pastures new " is a very good motto as 
representing the adventurous and energetic side of life. 
Yet there is a deep feeling in the familiar au revoir, and 
even when the revisit has a dash of melancholy about 
it, yet it unlocks the keys of all the associations ; and, to 
quote Wordsworth once more, 

" The visions of the past 

Sustain the heart in feelings, 
Life as she is — ever-changeful life — 
With friends and kindred dealings." 
6* E 




SOCIAL EQUIVALENTS. 




E are all valued sociably, not for ourselves in- 
tegrally, not for the mere worth of the naked 
soul, but for the kind of shot that we pay — for 
the advantage or amusement to others that we can 
bring, for something in ourselves which renders 
us desirable as companions, or for something belonging 
to our condition which makes us remunerative as guests. 
If we have no special qualification — if we neither look 
well nor talk well, neither bring glory nor confer pleas- 
ure — we must expect to be shunted to the side in favor 
of others who are up to the right mark and who give 
as much as they receive. If this truth were once fully 
established as a matter of social science, a great advance 
would be made, for nothing helps people more than to 
clear a subject of what fog may lie about it. And as the 
tendency of the age is to discover the fixed laws which 
regulate the mutable affairs of men, it would be just 
as well to extend the inquiry from the jury-box to the 
dinner-table, and from the blue-book to the visiting-list. 
Why is it that some people struggle all their lives to get 
a footing in society, yet die as they have lived — social 
Sisyphii, never accomplishing their perpetually-recur- 
ring task? There must be a reason for it, nothing being 



SOCIAL EQUIVALENTS. 67 

ruled by blind chance, though much seems to lie outside 
the independent will of the individual. Now enlighten 
these worthy people's minds on the unwritten laws 
of invitation, and show them that — though thoroughly 
honest souls, and to be trusted with untold gold, as ■ the 
saying is, or with their neighbor's pretty wife, which is 
perhaps a harder test — they are by no means to be trusted 
with the amusement of a couple of companions at a 
dinner-table. Show them that, how rich soever they 
may be in the rough gold of domestic morality, they 
are bankrupts in the small change which alone passes 
current in society, and if invited where they aspire 
would .be taken on as pauper cousins, unable to pay 
their footing and good for neither meat nor garnish. 
Let them, then, learn how to pay their shot, and their 
difficulties will vanish ; they would leave off repeating 
the fable of Sisyphus, and attain completion of endeavor. 
No one need say this is a hard or a selfish doctrine, for 
we all follow it in practice. Among the people we invite 
to our houses are some whom we do not especially like, 
but whom we must ask because of something paid in 
kind. There are people who may be personally agreeable 
or disagreeable, graceful or ungainly, but whom we can- 
not cut because of the relations in which we stand to- 
ward them, and who take their place by right because 
they pay their shot with punctuality. There are others 
whom we ask because of liking or desirability and shot 
paid in some specific form of pleasantness, as in beauty, 
fashion, good manner or notoriety ; but there are none 
absolutely barren of ail gifts of pleasantness to the guests, 
of reflected honor to ourselves, and of social small change 
according to the currency. We do not go into the by- 
ways or hedges to pick up drawing-room tatterdemalions, 
who bring nothing with them, and are simply so much 



68 SOCIAL EQUIVALENTS. 

dead weight on the rest, occupying valuable space and 
consuming so much vital energy. The law of reciprocity 
may be hard on the strivers who are ignorant of inex- 
orable provisions ; but it is a wholesome law, like other 
rules and enactments against remediable pauperism. 
And were we once thoroughly to understand that if we 
would sit securely at the table we must put something of 
value into the pool — that we must possess advantageous 
circumstances or pers'onal desirabilities as the shot to 
be paid for our place — the art of society would be better 
cultivated than it is now, and the classification of guests 
carried out with greater judgment. Surely, if the need 
of being gracious in manner, sprightly in talk, and of 
pleasant appearance generally — all cultivable qualities, 
and to be learnt, if not born in us by nature — were 
accepted as an absolute necessity, without which we 
must expect to be overlooked and excluded, drawing- 
rooms would be far brighter and dinner-tables far pleas- 
anter than they are at present, to the advantage of all 
concerned. And, after all, society is a great thing in 
human life; if not equal in importance to the family 
or the private household, it has its own special value, 
and whatever adds to its better organization is a gain in 
every sense. 





GETTING ON IN SOCIETY. 




those people to whom the getting on in society 
is the main object of existence, small things have 
large values ; and we must be in the life itself, 
either as partakers or close observers, to under- 
stand how matters which seem to us and the gen- 
erality of folk simply worthless are to them beyond 
price; how our pebbles are their jewels, and circum- 
stances which we cannot imagine to be of any possible 
importance to people out of a lunatic asylum are to 
them matters of life and death — and beyond. Mrs. 
Fourstars adopts for the banner under which to fight 
her arduous battle of social success unapproachableness 
in dress, and to encounter a more beautiful toilette than 
her own makes her physically ill and morally wretched. 
This is no myth ; it is a fact, and Mrs. Fourstars is an 
actual entity at this moment. She prides herself, with 
some cause, on her attire. A good natural taste, backed 
by a deep purse and aided by Parisian connections, 
has enabled her to attain this supremacy. She is no- 
toriously the best-dressed woman of her immediate cir- 
cle, and her last costume is as much a subject of discus- 
sion and admiration as the last new novel or yesterday's 
debate. She is invited to dinner at a new house ; per- 

69 



70 GETTING ON IN SOCIETY. 

haps her host and hostess are of a higher social rank 
than her ordinary acquaintance, and she is naturally 
anxious to succeed in her own line. But to be success- 
ful she must be confessedly the most superbly, attired 
woman of the evening; whereupon she puts on her 
freshest war-paint and abides the issue confidently. 
Quietly queening it in the place of honor, on the sofa 
sits my Lady Superba, with a yet more exquisite result 
of millinery genius dropping from her pretty shoulders, 
and Mrs. Fourstars is extinguished. Her dress may be 
beautiful, but it is not the most beautiful ; and, as she 
has gone in for superlatives, comparative values do not 
count. When she goes home she has a fit of illness and 
keeps her bed for a week, because my Lady Superba wore 
a gown that was considered to be a more striking ar- 
rangement of lengths of silk and yards of lace than her 
own. Yet Mrs. Fourstars has the same amount of " gray 
matter," the same number of convolutions in her brain 
as other women, and, it is to be presumed, like them, a 
soul to be saved. If she were not a Christian one would 
say she lacked knowledge, but being what she is, what 
can one do but lift up one's hands? 

By lions do some seek to attain this social success of 
which we speak. Their drawing-rooms are made famous 
by the assemblage of well-known names which the ser- 
vant mispronounces, and on the celebrity of others do 
they build their own renowm. Their title of honor is 
gained by gathering within the four walls of their draw- 
ing-room more pretty women and famous men than any 
other house can boast ; so that to be asked to their par- 
ties presupposes you to be one or other ; or, if too pa- 
tently neither, then it gives you the pleasure of a rare 
show, and the opportunity of seeing names you have 
always longed to behold in the actual flesh. The repute 



GETTING ON IN SOCIETY. 71 

of holding on your own account a lion-thronged salon 
is the sesame to many a house which else would not 
have opened its doors to you. As it is, you have some- 
thing to bring to the general picnic, and society endorses 
you because it wishes to share in your contributions. 
While, therefore, you can assemble together Beauties 
and Lions, so long will you " get on." Each new lion 
serves as a jackal by which others are induced, and 
clinging tight to a good thick mane is no unpleasant 
mode of transportation. 

To make a name for yourself is also a means of get- 
ting on ; and if you have this you want little else. You 
may be ill-mannered, ill-dressed, poor, eccentric, and not 
over w r ell-favored in person or repute, but you are a 
celebrity, and you may fling your cap over the mill if 
you like. Unless you outrage Mrs. Grundy too glaringly, 
you are free of her for as long as you can keep your fame 
fresh, and dazzle the world with your brilliancy or as- 
tonish it by your audacity. All you want in such case 
is your first footing and your first lion-hunter. This 
once caught, you are safe, and may go very nearly 
as you like. Your name carries you up, and if large 
enough it will float some amount of personal unpleasant- 
ness ; but, as a rule, it is wiser to add to your fame cer- 
tain pleasantnesses of manner and bearing, by which j^ou 
may get on by liking as much as by lionization. 

A very common way of getting on in society is by 
giving grand entertainments. Fashionable folk are des- 
perately like those half-fabulous Dokos of whom we 
read in books of travels — those African man-monkeys 
who are caught by means of bits of looking-glass, or 
bright tin plates, or strips of gay-colored ribbon, hung 
up to the trees behind which their captors hide. Say a 
self-made man, not personally desirable, wants to catch 



72 GETTING ON IN SOCIETY. 

the recognition of a well-conditioned Doko of undeni- 
able birth and breeding, whose invitations would be a 
decided proof of getting on. He hangs out a service of 
plate or a first-rate cook, with wines to match. He has 
done it, luxurious dinners and rare wine opening diffi- 
cult ways like the magic four-leaved clover. Well-man- 
aged balls again are good, if you can provide the guests 
as well as the circumstances ; they enlist all the young 
people on your side, and through them the elders. Of 
course all these methods presuppose wealth ; and being 
wealthy, it is no great matter how you have made 
your fortune, nor need you be too sensitive about your 
A's in the process of spending it. You have the money, 
and you can dispense with the A's. You will get on 
without them ; perhaps more slowly than if you were 
duly provided with the articles, but you will get on — 
and that is your aim — if only you will trust yourself to 
the tide of frequent, costly and picturesque entertain- 
ments. Do you doubt it? How many names have I 
not whispered of men and women that owe their social 
success solely and wholly to their practice of giving 
frequent generous entertainments ? 

Some people have tried to fight their battle of social 
success by the weapon of a lavish catholicity of gifts. 
To every new acquaintance, or old one worth keeping, 
a gift, value so much. But this is a hazardous method, 
and not to be warmly commended, for some of the 
donors have the inconvenient tendency to be more 
offended than gratified by these offerings, and are apt 
to look on gifts bestowed, not out of affection nor yet 
of gratitude, as bribes, given for the express purpose of 
getting on in society, and to resent them accordingly. 
By flattery do some seek to rise ; by eccentricity others ; 
some crawl upward snake-wise; others elbow you out 



GETTING ON IN SOCIETY. 73 

of your place and themselves into it. Some stick like 
burs to your skirts, and you never get rid of them; 
others use you as a ladder, and kick you down when 
they have done with you. The ways in which the art 
of getting on in society is exercised are manifold ; yet, 
on the whole, it seems somewhat a waste of human 
energy and intellect to exert all these powers to get 
more invitations to balls and parties than one can well 
manage, and to enlarge one's circle of acquaintances, 
which, as time is limited and power finite, means lessen- 
ing the number of one's friends. But this is what get- 
ting on in society means if we reduce it to its elemental 
verity. It means weariness, toil, loss of rest, and of 
health with it, useless expense, envy, disappointment, 
heart-burnings. All for the result of exchanging enter- 
tainments with A and B and C and D, for whom we 
care no more than if they were so many magpies ; while 
neglecting and finally losing E and F and G, whom we 
love, who love us, and whom until now we have held as 
our true and dear and trusted friends. It means stretch- 
ing out our hands for chaff instead of wheat, choosing 
brass for gold, and preferring the sham to the true, and 
the base to the high. Getting on in society may be a 
profitable art, but it strikes us that, pursued as it is 
generally pursued, it is about the meanest in which 
humanity can indulge ; and some love it. 
7 



CIVILITY. 




DESCRIPTION of the various modes of civility 
obtaining in various countries, though not pre- 
cisely edifying, would at least be entertaining. 
vS^J In China the civilest thing you can do for a sick 
friend or neighbor is to describe to him in glow- 
ing colors the beauty of the coffin which, to save time, 
has been already constructed and is ready for his re- 
ception. Mr. Catlin was deeply flattered, but sorely dis- 
tressed, by the courtesy of an Indian who insisted that 
he should make use of him as a pillow whenever he 
retired for the night. An English naval officer once 
dined by special invitation with a Turkish pasha. To- 
ward the close of the repast, the pasha, eyeing him all 
the time with a look of extreme benevolence, dipped his 
fingers into a variety of dishes, extracted a morsel from 
each, and. with the aid of a little rice gently amalgamated 
the whole between the palms of his hands. Then, in a 
fervor of triumphant hospitality, the Turk suddenly in- 
troduced the delicate rissole into the mouth of the agon- 
ized guest, and blandly awaited his grateful acknow- 
ledgments. Passing to civilized communities, French 
politeness used to be more thought of than it is now; 
but one thing must be conceded — when a Frenchman is 

74 



CIVILITY. 75 

civil, his civility is irresistible. It has a charm which 
leaves behind it a lingering sweetness — a vague agreeable 
persuasion that the civility shown to you was occasioned 
by your own amiable qualities. 

But after all, what is civility ? It is something better 
than good breeding. Good breeding, or mere superficial 
politeness, is consistent Avith the meanest selfishness. 
It is negative rather than active — careful not to give 
offence, but often slow to take trouble — content not to 
cause annoyance, but not necessarily anxious to impart 
pleasure. Rochefoucauld says that " La civilite est un 
desir d'en recevoir et d'etre estime poli." But this is 
counterfeit civility — a garment worn because we think it 
becoming — a piece of acting performed because it is in 
vogue, or because it makes the wheels of society run 
smoothly, or because we hope it may do us some good. 
A well-bred man will certainly conduct himself with 
propriety. He will not snatch from your expectant hand 
the glass of pale ale presented to you, exclaiming with 
Trilliber, " I called vurst !" Neither will he talk across 
you at the dinner-table to a friend on the other side of 
you in loud and voluble accents. Nor, if he directs his 
conversation to yourself, will he allude to topics notori- 
ously disagreeable — such as }^our recent expulsion from 
your society on a charge of electioneering bribery, the 
bankruptcy of your uncle, the singular marriage of your 
grandmother, the peculiar cut of your coat and your 
increasing corpulency. He will abstain from annoying 
others because he does not wish to be annoyed himself. 
He will make himself tolerably agreeable because it is 
good policy and because it is en regie. 

"Good Heavens!" exclaims Lord Chesterfield to his 
hopeful son, " how I should be shocked if you came into - 
my room with two left legs, presenting yourself with all 



76 CIVILITY. 

the grace and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hang- 
ing about you, like those in Monmouth street, upon 
tenterhooks ! Whereas I expect, nay require, to see 
you present yourself with the easy and genteel air of a 
man of fashion who has kept good company. I expect 
a gracefulness in all your motions and something par- 
ticularly engaging in your address. All this I expect, 
.... but, to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it 
we shall not converse much together, for I cannot stand 
inattention and awkwardness; it would endanger my 
health." However, to do his lordship justice, his notions 
of politeness went further than mere manners. His 
morality soared as high as the art of pleasing. But 
then it was always for a purpose. " Make your court 
particularly to such men and women as are highest in 
fashion and in the opinion of the public ; speak advan- 
tageously of them behind their backs in companies who 
you can't have reason to believe will tell them again." 
The art of pleasing is in truth the art of rising, of dis- 
tinguishing one's self, of making a figure and a fortune 
in the world. " Labor this great point, my dear child, 
indefatigably," etc. In short, the civility recommended 
was little else than a commercial investment — a business- 
like outlay for a strictly selfish purpose. Of course, a 
well-bred man may be often disinterestedly civil, but so 
may a vulgar man. The vulgar man is frequently the 
more civil man of the two. He may ignore the letter h. 
He may use his knife at meals in a way to make your 
flesh creep. He may insist upon taking off his gloves 
to shake hands in the middle of a crowded thorough- 
fare on a winter's day, though the operation occupies 
five minutes and } r ou are cut in two by the east wind. 
The vulgar man may wink confidentially on the small- 
est provocation, poke you in the ribs with affectionate 



CIVILITY. 77 

familiarity, make playful grimaces to give point to a 
humorous anecdote, and create as much discomposure 
in a correct circle as a gorilla or a maniac. But, though 
obnoxious to everybody, the man may mean to be civil, 
and fails only because he is out of his element. His de- 
sire to please is as genuine as that of the well-intentioned 
donkey who followed the lapdog's example and tried 
to jump upon his master's knees. Give him a fair op- 
portunity and suitable sphere of action, and possibly 
he may conquer your prejudices and reconcile you to 
his defects. The conventionally civil man will not 
trouble himself to walk two streets out of the way to 
direct a stranger into the right road ; nor will he vacate 
his seat at a closel} T -packed church or theatre to give ten 
minutes' rest to an unhappy man who has been stand- 
ing beside him, first on one leg, then on the other, for 
the last hour and a quarter; nor will he make one jot 
more haste over the newspaper at his club though he 
perceives three anxious individuals eyeing it as keenly 
" as careful robins eye the delver's toil." But an un- 
der-bred man often does this and more. His civility 
may not be on the surface, yet it is not the less real. 
It is no matter of conventionalism, but something deeper, 
springing from the heart rather than from his deference 
to social laws or customs. 

Perhaps the consideration shown to women in mo- 
ments of great peril, such as shipwrecks, is partly due 
to a habit of generous courtesy that has grown up in- 
sensibly and become an element of good in minds nat- 
urally hard and selfish. On civility to women — not be- 
cause they are young and pretty, but simply because 
they are women — Charles Lamb discourses eloquently, 
and gives a notable example in the shape of " Joseph 
Paice, of Broad Street, Merchant and Director of the 



78 CIVILITY. 

South Sea Company." " I have seen him — nay, smile 
not — tenderly escorting a marketwoman whom he has 
encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her 
poor basket of fruit that it might receive no damage, 
with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess. 
To the reverend form of female eld he would yield the 
wall — though it were to an ancient beggar worn an — with 
more ceremony than we can afford to show our grand- 
ams. He was the preux chevalier of the age ; the Sir 
Calidore or Sir Tristan to those who have no Calidores 
or Tristans to defend them. The roses that had long 
since faded thence still bloomed for him in those with- 
ered and yellow cheeks." Gallantry of this ideal type 
has sometimes been substantially rewarded. Once upon 
a time, a curate of narrow income but kindly disposition 
perceived two elderly spinsters in old-fashioned costume 
beset with jeers and jibes by a mob of idle men and boys 
lounging round the church porch whilst the bell was 
ringing for service. Forcing his way through the crowd, 
the curate gave one old lady his right arm and the other 
his left, led them both into church, and escorted them 
politely up the middle aisle to a convenient pew, regard- 
less of the stares and titters of the congregation. Some 
years afterward the needy curate was agreeably surprised 
by the announcement that the two old ladies, having 
lately died, had bequeathed him a handsome fortune in 
recognition of his well-timed courtesy. 

No doubt civility is a much easier virtue to some 
people than to others. A strong will and strong opin- 
ions have a very imperious influence over the manner. 
They inspire a strong antagonism toward strangers. 
People with decided views are apt to assume a monopoly 
of them, and to set down others as the slaves of con- 
venience or circumstance — a mode much opposed to 



CIVILITY. 79 

that sacrifice to the graces which is the superficial ren- 
dering of the quality of which we are speaking. They 
see a sort of hypocrisy in being civil, and in yielding to " 
persons who, more likely than not, have the loosest no- 
tions on matters which they feel to be all-important. Let 
such persons first set themselves right in these funda- 
mentals, and they will then be ready to take them to their 
heart of hearts. In the mean while non-conformists live 
on the north side of their regard. A little silence or re- 
straint, or a few downright contradictions on trifling mat- 
ters, are only so many demonstrations of sincerity or 
homage to their own unimpregnable principles. Nor is 
it only on questions of principle that non-complaisance 
hugs itself in sulky exclusion ; mere tastes can be to the 
full as unsociable, in as direct contrast to the whole rule 
that a man should always go with a predisposition to 
take the tone of the company he is going into, with a 
mind open to receive what is pleasing to others, and not 
obstinately bent on any particularity of its own. Strong 
wills of the order we mean are the most capable of any 
of sacrifice and effort in what they hold to be the work 
of life, but relaxation is another matter. Their notion 
of pleasure is still self-assertion of some kind; the im- 
pulse which complaisance feels where the comfort of 
others is at stake is not recognized by them ; if they are 
to be interested or amused, it must be by conformity to 
their standard. 

That civility is a virtue, not a mere felicity and orna- 
ment, we must think when we see how the want of it 
nullifies the usefulness of many good people, unfitting 
them for the more delicate offices of benevolence. It 
means, of course, something much deeper than manner, 
than smiles, than a bright reception and a ready atten- 
tion and courtesy of deportment; it means a cheerful 



80 CIVILITY. 

resignation to circumstances, and accepting of the situa- 
tion whatever it is — a general good-will toward mankind 
and sense of equality with them; the expectation of 
good from them, as well as a readiness to confer good 
upon them. 

Pride can perhaps feign complaisance, but cannot feel 
it. However, fortunately, there is much rough but 
necessary work to be done in the world which persons 
devoid of the grace in question are perhaps the better 
fitted for. It is where people have to do with the nicer 
sensibilities of men that the want of it is a bar to influ- 
ence. There are occasions when the plainest plain 
speaking is the first duty, and then the man who is ac- 
customed to make things pleasant might not be the 
right man. Yet it is well to remember that all great 
teachers of men are complaisant. St. Paul was all things 
to all men ; St. Peter bids us be courteous. 

Civility costs nothing — so we have been duly in- 
structed from an early age ; but, however little civility 
may cost us after the habit is acquired, the civility that 
has cost us nothing is of very little worth. For what is 
meant by civility ? A soft voice and a deferential man- 
ner ? A feeble readiness to yield in indifferent matters, 
and a reluctance to give offence or cause disturbance ? 
Scarcely so. True civility implies some degree, how- 
ever small, of self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice certainly 
costs us something. No doubt there is such a thing as 
feeling pleasure in self-sacrifice — a pleasure keener than 
can be gained by self-seeking. But such a pleasure is 
itself an evidence of goodness, and must not be con- 
founded with natural passion or instinct. It is the fruit 
of an habitual endeavor to act kindly by those with 
whom we may have to do, and has reached maturity 
after many struggles and conflicts. Thus, whoever takes 



CIVILITY. 81 

pleasure in civility has generally something good in him ; 
for the civility we mean is not a mere superficial polite- 
ness — " candy 'd deal of courtesy" — the indiscriminate 
fawning of a spaniel — the grimace of an unctuous im- 
postor — but a hearty wish to make others comfortable, 
even at our own expense. Of course, the wish may fail 
when the trial becomes severe. Civility does not neces- 
sarily imply a high degree of self-sacrifice. It indicates 
that the germ of it is there, capable of expansion, and 
so far as it goes is a virtuous and wholesome habit of 
the mind. 

F 




ELEMENTS OF PLEASANTNESS. 




LEASANTNESS is the chief element of agree- 
able companionship ; and this pleasantness is not 
merely not a function of the intellect, but may 
have scarcely anything to do with what is purely 
intellectual. Now there may be such a thing as 
good society, where witty and well-mannered people, 
who do not care much for one another, meet together ; 
but I venture to assert that society does not assume its 
highest form — is not, in fact, delightful — unless affection 
pervades it. When you are with people who, you are 
conscious, have a regard for you, your powers of pleas- 
ing and of being pleased expand almost indefinitely. 
It is not merely that in such society you feel safe from 
backbiting, and can leave the room without any appre- 
hension of your character being torn to pieces in your 
absence. It is not merely that what you then say and 
do is sure to be well received, and the least possible mis- 
construction be put upon your sayings and doings. But 
there is something beyond all this — something beyond 
the domains of logic — which produces a sunny atmo- 
sphere of satisfaction that raises your powers to the 
highest when you are with good and loving people. 
Now if this is true of society in general, it is probably 

82 




I in 



ELEMENTS OF PLEASANTNESS. 83 

true of more restricted companionship ; and kindness of 
disposition must be admitted to be one of the principal 
elements of pleasantness in a companion. Of course 
sympathy ensures a certain good companionship. But 
we have no right to expect to meet with many sympa- 
thetic people in the course of our lives. Pleasantness 
has a much wider, if a lower, sphere. The pleasant man 
to you is the man you can rely upon — who is tolerant, 
forbearing, and faithful. 

Let us consider the hindrances to pleasantness. Fas- 
tidiousness is a great hindrance to the formation of a 
pleasant character. People who have every other merit 
are prevented from being pleasant persons by fastidi- 
ousness. Again, the habit of over-criticism is another 
hindrance to pleasantness. We are not fond of living 
always with our judges, and daily life will not bear the 
unwholesome scrutiny of over-critical persons. Even 
refined manners, if they have reference only to the re- 
fined person himself, may be a drawback from pleasant- 
ness rather than an aid to it. On the other hand, that 
rudeness which some people mistake for frankness is 
never found in a pleasant person. 

A singular hindrance to pleasantness in man or wo- 
man, and one that requires to be dwelt upon, is the 
habit of exigence. That last is not a common English 
word, and I do not see why we should borrow from the 
French a word which may fairly be adopted into our 
own language. It is worth while to inquire a little into 
the causes that make people tiresomely exigent. This 
habit springs from many sources — from a grasping affec- 
tionateness ; from a dissatisfied humility ; from egotism ; 
from want of imagination or from a disordered imagin- 
ation. 

Let us take a common instance of its practical work- 



84 ELEMENTS OF PLEASANTNESS. 

ing. You are thrown into intimacy with a person by 
some peculiar train of circumstances; you relish the 
company of that person, and you two become friends. 
The circumstances change, and naturally, perhaps in- 
evitably, you do not see so much of one another as you 
used to do. If he is exigent, he makes this a matter of 
offence. His dignity is hurt, his egotism is aroused, his 
affectionateness is wounded, and his want of imagination 
prevents him from seeing that this discontinuance of 
intimacy is inevitable. The truth is, we are not guided 
in our companionship with others by our likings only, 
for companionship is greatly controlled by external cir- 
cumstances. Peevish, exigent persons will not perceive 
this, and will complain about broken friendship until 
they often succeed in breaking it. This class of persons 
must have affection proved to them ; and by such a habit 
of mind they become exceedingly tiresome. 

The foregoing is but one instance of the tiresomeness 
of exigence, but it is very multiform and varied; and 
for no given day can you thoroughly satisfy a person 
who has suffered this habit of mind to develop itself to 
a morbid extent, and who is always thinking whether he 
or she is sufficiently loved, honored and regarded. Such 
people make those about them timid and ill at ease from 
constant fear lest they should give offence, and thus the 
chief charm of companionship is blotted or effaced. 

It may appear to detract from the high merits of a 
pleasant person when it is asserted as very desirable 
that he should have a good opinion of himself. He 
can, however, do without a good opinion of himself if he 
have a noble constancy of nature, for he is then very apt 
to attribute a similar constancy to others, and is not 
prone to believe that he is the subject of an intentional 
slighting. The self-reliant, hearty, uncomplaining per- 



ELEMENTS OF PLEASANTNESS. 85 

son, believing that everybody thinks well of him and 
means kindly of him, creates good and kind thoughts in 
others, and walks about in an atmosphere of pleasant- 
ness. To form a pleasant character it had better even be 
a little obtuse than over-sensitive and exigent. 

I might go on enumerating the many hindrances to 
pleasantness, and with few exceptions they would be 
found to consist in moral defects such as those I have 
just commented upon. 

It is one of the most certain characteristics of a 
supremely pleasant person that he is at his ease in every 
society, is unembarrassed with a prince, and, what is far 
more difficult, is not uncomfortable with his own ser- 
vant if he is thrown into near society with him, as on 
a journey. 

Lord Bacon, commenting upon diet, declares that there 
should be a variety, and that it should tend to the more 
generous extreme. That is exactly what should happen 
in the formation of a pleasant character. It should tend 
to credulity rather than to suspicion, to generosity than 
to parsimoniousness — be apt to think well rather than to 
think ill of others, looking everywhere for the excuse 
instead of the condemning circumstance. 

A man blessed with such a character it is good fortune 
to meet, and speaking with him at the corner of the 
street enlivens the beginning and cheers the end of a 
working day. " Gratior et dies" applies to the presence 
of such a person more than it ever did to an Augustus 
or a Maecenas. 

It might be thought that women, who are excluded 
from some of the higher objects of ambition, would be 
especially inclined to cultivate pleasantness ; and I do 
think that they are pleasanter than men. Judging from 
what little I have seen of the world, I should say that 



86 ELEMENTS OF PLEASANTNESS. 

women do not cultivate pleasantness to that extent that 
might be expected of them. The reason probably is, 
that they make their circle a very limited one, and are 
content, I suppose, with being exceedingly agreeable 
in that circle. 

Now, I maintain that it would be a very laudable am- 
bition to endeavor to become a pleasant person, and 
that it is not at all a work left for fools or for merely 
empty, good-natured persons. There are many who are 
almost dying for fame, who are longing for great office 
which they will probably fill badly, who think life won- 
derfully well spent if they can amass a sum of money 
which they will not know what to do with when they 
have it. I venture to put before them a new ambition — 
that of becoming pleasant to their fellow-creatures. It 
is a path in which they will not be jostled by a crowd 
of competitors. 




SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 




HERE are times when we are disposed to set 
down all the lesser sins and mistakes of human- 
ity to simple want of imagination. If once we 
get the notion into our heads, it seems to explain 
so much, to account for so many blunders, that 
we can scarcely tell where to stop till we have trans- 
ferred to imagination all that has been said of charity, 
and proved that no errors are possible where the faculty 
is kept in proper working order. From the sin of keep- 
ing dinner waiting to the atrocities of a Roman emperor 
we find a clue to everything in this one deficiency. Who 
could dawdle if he realized the pangs of hungry waiters 
upon his delay ? And how could the biggest tyrant 
that ever lived have bullied and oppressed with any 
comfort if he had once imagined what people said of 
him, or pictured to himself the figure he cut in the 
minds of his contemporaries? However, the popular 
idea of imagination takes so little account of its every- 
day services that we do not often find persons who take 
this view. People are not supposed to be possessed 
of imagination unless they exercise it in some marked 
and conspicuous manner. It is not commonly perceived 

87 



88 SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 

of what sterling service a clever imagination is in the 
household and the family, and how wrong things often 
go for want of it. In fact, people constantly talk of 
reason and good sense where this other faculty is the 
thing really meant — imagination in its ordinary uncon- 
scious working. The ingenious arrangement and clever 
foresight which keep things going and make schemes 
answer, the grasp of new combinations, realizing all that 
is involved in apparently immaterial change, the fresh 
current of small interests, the welcome of new ideas 
preserving the most monotonous home from stagnation, 
— these are rarely recognized for what they are. Still less 
is the charm of a wide sympathy attributed to its right 
success — a power of picture-drawing and a compre- 
hension of untried situations. Can any sympathy, in- 
deed, go beyond the power of imagining the condition 
that is to be felt for or pitied ? We may relieve positive 
distress, we may pity in mere faith, but we can scarcely 
feel for another or pity intelligently without imagina- 
tion. We think of this faculty as a stimulant, we con- 
nect it with the idea of excitement, but its passive side 
is fully as important in social life when it works as a 
preventive, a steadier, and often as the only effectual 
sedative against fussiness and perverted useless ac- 
tivity. Certain it is that no one can be entirely agree- 
able without some share of imagination, but it often ex- 
ists where it has nothing positive to show for itself — no 
particular readiness, sparkle or play of fancy. Its 
working may be all in the way of checks, in correct- 
ing bad tricks of thought, saving its possessor alike from 
caring for what is not worth caring for and from caring 
for nothing; repressing those vices of conversation which 
spring from prosaic dullness— such as importunate per- 
sistence and talking of self — and keeping him in har- 



SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 89 

mony with his surroundings, and bright and interesting 
even in silence and passivity. 

Most failures in the endeavor to please are due to this 
one deficiency. People with the best and most amiable 
intentions miss being pleasant company if they cannot 
hit their friends' humor, or tell how their own words 
and manner will affect them. The most awkward has 
his hour of appreciation ; there are joys and sufferings 
that every good heart can sympathize with ; but for the 
choicer moments of life, for the apprehension of the 
subtler emotions, imagination is indispensable. Prac- 
tice, no doubt, will develop minute seeds of sympathy 
into life, but the incorrigibly prosaic must submit to 
live amid the outsides of things. It is painful some- 
times to see how the best and most unselfish disposi- 
tions will fail of their full reward for want of tact, 
w r hich is nothing else than imagination at close quar- 
ters and put to social and possibly ignoble uses. That 
power which informs us how fictitious characters will 
act under every posture of affairs is readily recognized 
as imagination ; but the man of tact possesses the same 
gift for practical purposes. He may not be able to set 
the puppets of his own fancy going, but he knows to a 
nicety w T hat the people about him think and feel. He 
knows, though perhaps he could give no account of his 
knowledge; and he has thus an enormous advantage 
over the blind good nature which constantly irritates 
and worries where it hoped to confer pleasure, misin- 
terpreting signs which tact reads like print, and creating 
an atmosphere of disturbance where the other inspires 
security and repose. No doubt good nature holds its 
own in the long run, and we can scarcely disparage its 
clumsiest, least-discerning exhibitions with impunity ; 
but,, in fact, defect of imagination more commonly en- 

8* 



90 SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 

courages a form of selfishness even where largeness of 
heart is not wanting. There are many people constitu- 
tionally incapable of believing in feelings unknown to 
themselves. They want the capacity for doing so. 
They will not, and seem as if they could not, credit 
likings and antipathies, pains and pleasures, of which 
they have no experience. They either set them down 
as pretence and affectation, or they take no count of 
them, treating them as empty words devoid of all mean- 
ing for those who profess them; or perhaps they over- 
ride ideas alien to their own taste as a sort of vermin 
which it is a duty and a merit to crush. The strong 
often will not believe in weakness, nor the healthy in 
sickness, nor the high-spirited in nervousness or de- 
pression, nor the methodical in the necessity for variety 
and change. Old persons of this temper will even forget 
that they were ever young, and, following the system of 
their whole life, will regard their present estimate of 
pleasure and pain as not merely the only reasonable 
one, but the only one which can seriously be enter- 
tained, other notions being simple delusions. "But it 
must be charming to dive and feel the water rushing 
over your head," sighs Andersen's "Ugly Duckling." 
" Nonsense !" says the hen. " Do you ever see me dive, 
or the tom-cat, or even our old mistress? You do not 
know what you are talking about." Of course selfish- 
ness adopts this strain for its own purpose ; but people 
are not always selfish, morally, who use such arguments, 
and the charge is often applied unjustly. It is certain, 
at least, that persons thus constituted have need of a 
self-restraint, and a mere blind faith in what they cannot 
understand, for which their friends in their turn would 
scarcely have fancy enough to give them credit. 

We see people continually failing in their ends from 



SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 91 

the same deficiency. They cannot tell how to reach 
others ; they have no selection of arguments ; they have 
no delicate tools, but only such as will wrench and 
hammer. This is called ignorance of human nature or 
want of penetration ; but of course whatever is not seen 
by the sense must be seen, if at all, through the imagina- 
tion. A very strong will disdains this faculty, or dulls 
it by this disdain; it prefers getting its way through 
mere force. A sense of power creates a desire to take 
the most direct way to its end. If there is power 
enough, it succeeds; but as often a dull or quenched 
imagination balks a strong will of its desire. There are 
a hundred things acceptable or repugnant to us accord- 
ing to the method in which they are first presented to 
our consideration. If we think of critical times in our 
lives — occasions when a choice or alternative was pre- 
sented to us — we very likely may find that the mode in 
which it was brought before us determined us. If the 
suggestion came with due consideration for our habits 
of thought, it was received and its bearings entered into ; 
but, put arbitrarily and defiantly, the idea failed of an 
entrance, made no way, and was never entertained at 
all, probably from some kindred inability in ourselves 
to seize the points of a new situation. The propounder 
could not or would not picture the mind to which he 
sought access, so as to secure a primary reception. Of 
course this sort of picture-drawing has to be cultivated 
like any other talent, and necessity here, as elsewhere, 
is the great teacher; but whenever it is not possessed, 
either from incapacity or indifference, there will be a 
growing discrepancy of tastes and interests, for people 
cannot live in harmony without it. 

How very few persons have the least idea of what goes 
on behind their backs ! It is well, indeed, that it is so, 



92 SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 

for the knowledge might be too much for humanity ; but 
the thought comes now and then across us as circum- 
stances show some marked or grotesque example of this 
blindness. It seems sometimes as though men supposed 
that the people and things they control by their presence 
either stood still in their absence or proceeded like clock- 
work in the same groove. The life about them is sup- 
posed, like the author's story, to wait for its progress and 
denouement till he resumes the pen. Experience tells 
us the exact contrary of this. Every change, departure, 
absence in a circle, even in the case of its more insignifi- 
cant members, makes a corresponding change in those 
who remain behind ; something may then be said which 
would not have been said, or would have been said 
differently. But who thinks of this? We have heard 
of an old lady so perspicacious on this point that she 
preferred inviting her young friends in couples, in order 
that they might laugh at her behind her back, and so 
never be without entertainment; but how few possess 
such an illumination of insight! Grim overstrictness 
and formality might indeed learn a lesson could they 
see the sudden relief from restraint which, relaxes tongue, 
nerve and limb as they close the door behind them ; but 
it is well for human sensitiveness generally that fancy is 
sluggish in this direction. People need not leave their 
characters in Mrs. Candor's charge to flinch from the 
tone adopted toward them in their absence. It comes 
with a jar upon the ear of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson simply 
to find themselves, their clever sons and attractive 
daughters, summarily disposed of as "the Johnsons," 
and classed, without discriminating respect, among com- 
monplace members of their social circle. A certain self- 
complacency, necessary perhaps to happiness, distin- 
guishes us to ourselves, till our scale will not tally with 



SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 93 

that of our friends. To almost all it is a surprise — often 
something of a shock as well — if, in an affair of any deli- 
cacy, chance shows them some letter containing mention 
of themselves not intended for their eyes. Reason tells 
them that there is nothing to complain of, but their 
imagination had not helped them to an exact appre- 
hension of the place they occupy in other minds. This 
is what is meant by the saying that listeners never hear 
any good of themselves. 

It must be granted that wherever the imagination 
has a strain put upon it this passive form fails of its 
development. Poets and novelists, as far as we know, 
do not apply their gifts to domestic purposes, and there- 
fore live in as great mistakes and make as many blunders 
as the most prosaic of their neighbors. Still, there are 
depths from which the faculty, however exercised, will 
save its possessor. It implants misgivings in the vainest 
and most selfish. Nobody who has it can play the fool 
with the same exuberant, sustained, and, we may say, in- 
nocent relish as those can whom Nature has sent in the 
world without it. We cannot deny, however, that an en- 
tire absence of imagination where the other faculties are 
strong is often beneficial to a man's interests and helps 
him to carry out his designs. He overcomes difficulties 
simply by not seeing them. In this case nobody detects 
the deficiency ; he is supposed simply to have a mastery 
over his imagination, not to be blind to what is patent 
to all the world besides. What we are considering, how- 
ever, is not the advantage or disadvantage of imagination 
to its possessor, but the debt that social life owes to it. 
Half mankind are afraid of imagination ; the best ser- 
vice they give it credit for is the furnishing their leisure 
with agreeable reading, though they nevertheless grudge 
the task it imposes by forcing them now and then into 



94 SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 

uncongenial nights of thought. They never think of 
looking for imagination in their wives and families and 
servants. What we say is, Let men cultivate imagination 
in those about them if they would be comfortable, if 
they would enjoy life, if they would escape the pettiest 
forms of inconvenience, if they would avoid dull days 
and worrying hours. How many annoyances would a 
practiced imagination in those about them avert ! Would 
people be ever tedious if they could picture the minds 
of their hearers ? or would they be bores if they could 
take a look out of themselves ? Could they be habitually 
unpunctual and dilatory if their fancy pressed upon 
them the weariness and anxiety which those dependent 
on them must suffer? Could there be so many un- 
governed tempers if they knew how to read the im- 
pressions which their tantrums produce ? Could there 
be so much mere profession and empty protestation in 
conjunction with the gift of realization? Above all, 
would there be so much dull talk? — for talk is really 
duller than it need be, considering the collective capacity 
of mankind. Few things that must be talked of at all 
need be uninteresting. There must b.e gossip, but it 
need not be such dull gossip — such endless discussions 
of facts on which nothing hangs, of which nothing can 
be made, which begins and ends with itself — as most 
of it is. A few grains of imagination transform gossip 
simply into something suggestive, connect it with human 
nature, and transmute it into a picture of life which 
memory may add to its stores till at length it becomes 
history. Mere reason and common sense get over the 
difficulty by discarding it altogether as trifling. Yet 
there are yellow primroses of the hearth, as well as of 
the river-brim, which it needs a gift to discern. Keason 
and common sense are too apt to think many pleasant 



SOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. 95 

things nonsense, and to confine themselves to the edify- 
ing and the useful, to cold science, to grave moralities. 
The virtue of imagination is that it can utilize mean 
materials and dignify trivial ones ; and this by no con- 
scious effort, but through its inherent power of assimila- 
tion and recognition of kindred qualities. Imagination 
of the domestic sort needs, indeed, to be unconscious 
and without design. To eke out a little fancy with a 
great deal of careful, deliberate imitation is the way 
with most novelists. The effect upon their works is 
not inspiring, but far less exhilarating are the efforts of 
would-be fancy upon the social circle. 




MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 




II HERE can be no doubt that a great many of the 
|| actions which we take to be infallible signs of the 
'■'- character of the person who does them are, in 
fact, not infallible at all. This is only another 
way of putting a truth which few people would 
care to deny — that few characters are entirely consistent 
and complete in all their parts. Wise people have weak 
places, and foolish people have often acuteness enough 
to feign one or two of the superficial airs and attributes 
of wisdom. De Retz instantly marked Chigi as having a 
small mind from the moment that he told him tha% he 
had written with the same pen for three years, and that 
it was a capital pen still. This proved a sagacious judg- 
ment. When Chigi became pope, it was truly said of 
him that he was "great in small things and small in great 
things" — just the kind of person who would have a con- 
ceit about his pen. Still, the mere fact on which De Retz 
founded a judgment which circumstances afterward jus- 
tified was not in itself a perfectly adequate basis for such 
a judgment. A man might amuse himself by taking 
excessive care of his pen, and might find sincere satis- 
faction in the thought that the pen had lasted for three 
years and still was a good pen, without necessarily be- 

96 



MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 97 

ing a trifler and a fool. We continually find that men 
of subtle and vigorous intellect constantly exercised in 
important affairs delight in being able to think or talk 
about small things, and have an interest in what to 
prigs and pedants appear disgustingly frivolous con- 
cerns. It is not always very pleasant to meet a great 
man in one of these leisure moments. We expect some 
outward and visible sign of his greatness — that he will 
talk well and say fine things, and disclose all that lies 
next to his heart. We forget that he has been thinking 
or writing fine things all day, and that he has had quite 
enough of what lies next his heart to be only too happy 
to forget it for a while. The poet is only too glad to 
escape from the ideas which have mastered him for 
hours and days and weeks. The philosopher who has 
been the slave of his books and his trains of thought is 
charmed to mix with people who don't read and don't 
know exactly what a train of thought means. The 
statesman who has been busied in affairs and despatches 
and squabbles among his colleagues, and so forth, thinks 
himself in Paradise when he can expatiate upon horses 
or crops or the opera. Persons who do not know what 
it is to have an urgent and serious interest in their 
minds are extremely vexed and disappointed when they 
find a prominent man unwilling to exhaust himself by 
"tumbling" for their pleasure and behoof. They are 
very often ready to vow that his prominence is alto- 
gether unmerited, and that, in spite of everything to the 
contrary, he is at bottom a thoroughly poor creature. 
It is certainly true that a man may attain prominence 
by virtue of charlatanry, and therefore these exacting 
persons may now and then be right in their disparage- 
ment of people with a reputation. But it is a violent 
mistake to assume that a man is beneath his reputation 
9 G 



98 MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 

just because he declines to show off or talk up to it when- 
ever anybody chooses to try to wind him up as though 
he were some cunningly-constructed machine. Talley- 
rand was as judicious as usual when he replied to the 
impertinent visitor who wanted to involve him in a con- 
versation upon affairs of state, " Pardon me, sir, I never 
talk about what I understand." Wise men often follow 
his example. It is to be deplored that it does not be- 
come more general. Society would be ever so much 
more enjoyable if people would not insist upon airing 
their specialties; and, as a rule, a man with sincere 
respect for his own specialty, and honest knowledge of 
it, is the last person in the world to thrust it upon those 
who are not competent to understand or to measure it. 
He is much more willing to discourse upon his pen, like 
Cardinal Chigi, or his inkpot or the kind of paper which 
he uses, than upon the ideas which they are the humble 
instruments of fixing and conveying to the public. Any- 
body can understand and appreciate the qualities of a 
pen which has proved a good and serviceable pen for 
three whole years. Provided the owner of such an im- 
plement does not carry his demand for. our enthusiasm 
on the subject too far, he could not choose a better kind 
of subject for light conversation after a day's work. It 
is rank ingratitude to mark such a man out as having 
a small mind. 

By very solemn people it is thought an extremely 
unworthy thing to have favorite animals. A man or a 
woman who cares for a dog or a cat, and who does not 
disguise the attachment, passes in certain sorts of circles 
for a woefully light-minded person. How can anybody, 
they ask, who sees the overwhelming seriousness of life 
endure to devote a single grave thought to a mere brute 
or to find an atom of pleasure in the creature? But 



MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 99 

here, again, it is possible that a very humane and sym- 
pathizing person may have pets, just for the same reason 
which makes a studious person more ready to chat about 
his pen than its products. One requires relief and con- 
trasts. If a lady has spent the afternoon in visiting 
paupers and squalid wretches, she needs to have another 
sort of picture in the evening ; and if the contemplation 
of a dog curled upon the hearthrug supplies this solace, 
why should she be thought the worse of on that account? 
Yet people are so hasty in thinking ill of a neighbor's 
character that the sight of the comfortable dog fills them 
with righteous indignation and contempt. They declare 
that the brute's owner is heartless and selfish and indif- 
ferent to the grave facts of life, as though the existence 
of misery were the strongest possible reason for our ab- 
solute refusal to be happy. One may be very fond of a 
brute without being either indolent or indifferent, or 
anything else that is bad. Erskine was not idle, and 
he was not incapable of the warmest interest in public 
things, simply because he had a vessel full of pet leeches 
on which every day after dinner he was wont to lav- 
ish his endearments and caresses. And, after all, a 
sage dog or a decorous cat is a much more creditable 
and profitable companion than many kinds of human 
beings. There is a false notion current that a highly 
social temperament is also a highly benevolent temper- 
ament, and that if a man likes the society of human 
beings he is sure to be solicitous for their interests. 
Nothing could be more mistaken. It is constantly the 
case that a man who rather shuns the haunts of his 
kind, and has a leech or a tortoise or a dog for his most 
habitual companion, cares a great deal more for the pub- 
lic well-being, and would do a great deal more in the 
way of personal sacrifice to promote it, than the airy 



100 MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 

popular being who is never happy except when he is in 
the company of a troop of other people. 

One of the most grievous confusions of thought in our 
estimates of character is- to mistake exactness for hard- 
ness. Anybody who insists on precision, punctuality, 
order, and upon the rigid recognition of facts, is inevit- 
ably set down by nine out of ten acquaintances as of a 
cold, hard, selfish nature. Unless a man is a little weak 
and a little blind, men would not have it that his cha- 
racter has a single pliant or tender fibre in it. It is so 
profoundly distasteful to the weak people — that is, to 
most people — to be brought into contact with a strong 
person who knows what he is aiming at, and keeps a 
cool eye upon the means by which he is to reach it, that 
no experience to the contrary will convince them that a 
man may be firm, resolute, punctual, indefatigably in- 
dustrious, a shade exacting, and yet overflowing with 
the milk of human kindness, and always ready to be- 
stow with his left hand all that he had sedulously 
reaped by the toil of his right. It is not certain that 
the base emotion of envy does not enter largely into this 
confusion of a collection of most useful virtues with a 
very odious vice. If one finds that a man is making 
irresistible way by his steadfastness, it is some comfort 
to a meaner nature to believe, or pretend to believe, that 
this steadfastness is the product of a horrid congelation 
of all the finer and wider sympathies. Of course, when 
envy comes in, the confusion between singleness of pur- 
pose and hardness of heart is something much more 
malignant than a mere blunder of observation. But, 
apart from this vile intruder, men are too willing to be- 
lieve that a cool head usually implies a cold heart. It 
is a superstition. There is no a priori reason why we 
should expect the one to accompany the other; and all 



MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 101 

observation goes to show that the one does not, as a mat- 
ter of fact, always accompany the other. Still, the preju- 
dice remains. The purposeless are apt to quake in the 
face of the man who has a purpose, who knows clearly 
what it is, and steadily does his best to carry it out to 
the end. 

This quaking makes them willing to think that there 
must be something sinister in the person who is the 
occasion of it. If such a conviction does anything to 
console them for their alarms, possibly the cool-headed 
ones would not grudge it them. Still, all false measure- 
ments of this sort are worth avoiding. It is not of very 
much importance to a stoic whether people judge him 
rightly or wrongly. But as we live in a world with 
others, it is of importance to a man not to carry his 
stoicism too far. If he does, he is pretty sure to end by 
enjoying the mistakes which his neighbors make about 
him, and encouraging them. And this is a form of 
affectation which is sure to engender a very hurtful 
amount of self-consciousness — the mental condition 
which is about the most hurtful to good work that is 
possible to the human mind. 

In by far the majority of cases contempt for public 
opinion is a sign either of consummate impudence or 
surpassing shallowness. The man whose chief care in 
life is, in all his opinions and habits, to be in a com- 
placent minority of one, never makes any mark on those 
who are brought into contact with him, and for the 
sufficient reason that he has no mark particularly worth 
making. The most egotistical of men, if he onty digs a 
little way below the surface, is sure to come on a great 
deal that he cannot but recognize as good and admirable, 
which the world recognizes as fully as he himself does. 
It is only when they never take the trouble to go below 



102 MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 

what is immediately visible that people acquire a habit 
of thinking all the rest of the world but themselves a 
parcel of wrong-headed idiots. And the other phase of 
contempt for public censure, arising from selfishness or 
impudence, is the reflection of a similar theory. The 
only difference is, that while the one man supposes the 
average intelligence of his neighbors to stand at zero, 
the other regards their average virtue as a mere empty 
pretence and sham. Of course it should be observed 
that there is a good side to the power of looking down 
on the world. A man may rebel against social pressure, 
and pass through the fire of general censure without 
flinching, for other reasons than that he considers so- 
ciety to be made up of fools and dupes, and the end-all 
and be-all of society duty to consist in every one pur- 
suing his own lowest and most immediate interest. 
Nearly every thoughtful person can find points in which 
he dislikes the conduct or opinions of those about him, 
and in which he is indisposed to let himself conform to 
them. In order to hold his ground in these respects 
without losing ground elsewhere, he must have both 
courage and knack. The first is easier, and commoner 
than the second. Plenty of men have pluck enough to 
touch the hot metal, but then they get burnt. They 
boldly defy popular and orthodox opinion; then they 
suddenly find themselves branded with a dozen evil 
names. A man of another sort will contrive to hold 
just the same unfashionable opinions, and even to ex- 
press them to a tolerably wide extent, without receiving 
any punishment whatever. He understands the trick 
of dealing with the fiery element. This is by no means 
saying that the clever salamander is the nobler or wor- 
thier of the two. He seems to have the best of it; and 



MISTAKES IN CHARACTER. 



103 



so he has in one sense. Still, as a rule, the other would 
probably rather be without the knack, and bear what- 
ever wounds he may get inflicted on him with as much 
equanimity as he happens to be master of. 



THE USES OF DIGNITY. 




dm T was stated in the newspapers some time ago that 
I at an important town two learned judges were 
LlJ conveyed to church to hear a sermon in a very- 
shabby old phaeton drawn by a very seedy- 
looking horse. Not unnaturally, this extraordi- 
nary simplicity excited a good deal of remark. The re- 
porter called it Spartan simplicity, though one does not 
quite perceive what the Spartans had to do with shabby 
phaetons and bad hacks. But whether we choose to 
consider such an incident as an exhibition of Spartan 
simplicity or of misplaced stinginess, it is equally sug- 
gestive of one or two rather remarkable undercurrents 
in modern society. There are various causes at work to 
make people pay less attention and attach less value to 
what are beginning to be spoken of, not without a shade 
of contempt, as the outsides of things. For various 
reasons we are becoming disposed to- look more and 
more entirely to results, without thinking much of the 
gracefulness or dignity or any other minor quality 
of the means which lead to the results. So long 
as the work is performed — and in work may be 
justly included a large share of what, by a distinc- 
tion without a difference, is classified as pleasure — we 

104 



THE USES OF DIGNITY. 



105 



are every day getting more indifferent to details that are 
non-essential. If offenders are tried and punished with 
justice and despatch, of what possible consequence can it 




be whether the judges went to church in a rickety old 
brougham or cab or in a bran-new coach? If you can 
eat your dinner as hastily and digest it as comfortably 
in a sealskin shooting-jacket, why should you take the 
trouble to change it for a dress-coat ? So far as it goes, this 
mode of argument cannot be impugned; only there is no 
reason why it should not be carried a great deal farther. 
The judge's knowledge of law would not be a whit di- 
minished, nor his sagacity and penetration any less ac- 
tive, if he sat in his shirt-sleeves in a rocking-chair. If 
it is desirable that everybody should on all occasions 
wear exactly whatever costume he finds most comfort- 



106 THE USES OF DIGNITY. 

able, it is hard to see why in summer he should not 
go out to dinner in the simple and unostentatious 
apparel of the Sandwich Islander. And perhaps we 
ought on the same principle to act on the doctrine 
of Diogenes, that whatever is not in itself improper 
ought to be performed publicly ; which, it is evident, 
would bring about an uncommonly alarming state of 
things. 

Life without these secondary adjuncts of grace and 
dignity is like one of those plain gaunt houses which 
are often eminently commodious and healthy, but which 
have no claim to be considered types of the most per- 
fect domestic architecture. A great many people much 
prefer these bleak mansions, and fit them up inside 
in a style of corresponding severity. One can live 
in them very well, it cannot be denied ; and food may 
taste as agreeably and prove as nutritious, and one's 
sleep may be as sound, and one can do as much work 
there as anywhere else — perhaps. And just in the same 
way a man can get some pleasure, and do a great deal 
of work, if he is wholly indifferent to the ornamenta- 
tion of his life. But the question is whether this adorn- 
ment is not, after all, worth something for its own sake, 
and whether it is not an end for which even some sacri- 
fices may advantageously be made. Is attention to the 
outside, to the husk, to be fairly treated as a waste of 
time? It is probably from observing merely that there 
is no radical connection between dignity in small mat- 
ters and genuine worth and power in those weightier 
matters which make the base of our esteem for one an- 
other, that so many people have failed to recognize the 
existence of dignity in non-essentials as a substantial and 
independent merit, or even have come to regard it as a 
downright littleness. 



THE USES OF DIGNITY. 107 

It is natural that an esteem for the decorations of life 
should be a late growth of our civilization, and that their 
value should not strike the large section of educated 
people who, though they do not think of Rousseau or 
Bernardin St. Pierre, always sigh for some ideal of 
primitive simplicity, where no cumbrous etiquette, no 
consideration of outside appearance, should fetter the 
free intercourse of man and man and hinder each from 
living his own life. Like young lovers, we are — for a 
short period in our early days, at all events — eager to 
believe that the happiest life is that which is occupied 
with fewest interests, and which is least dependent on 
anything outside of ourselves. Time and thought suc- 
ceed in convincing most persons that it would be con- 
siderably nearer the truth to look upon the best kind 
of happiness as lying in the widest possible range of 
interests and tastes, and as belonging to him who, by 
opportunity and culture, is able to add to sterling worth 
and sound practical judgment the keenest appreciation 
of all minor pleasures and the nicest attention to all 
minor adornments. Simplicity is very often only a 
pleasant name for shabbiness or squalor, and dignified 
simplicity is a fine way of talking about shabbiness and 
conceit combined. Even in the cases where simplicity 
of life is most becoming and most admirable, it is in it- 
self only a doing without certain things. The contented 
endurance of this privation may indicate strength and 
common sense, but the man would have abstracted more 
out of life if the privation had not been necessary, and 
if he had been capable both of feeling and of gratifying 
a large number of sensibilities. The power of being able 
to endure with contentment, where it is necessary, the 
lack of all decoration, is a very valuable one ; but the 
necessity of exercising the power * is in itself almost 



108 THE USES OF DIGNITY. 

always a sheer drawback. A man may deserve all praise 
for foregoing every superfluous adornment, but the cir- 
cumstances which make such conduct praiseworthy are, 
so far as they go, justly to be deplored. To be obliged 
to live in dingy rooms, and have no pictures nor flowers 
nor music, and fare coarsely and wear bad clothes, — all 
this is a deprivation which the most philosophical of 
men would be all the better for not having to undergo. 
If it is endured for the sake of discharging some un- 
questioned duty, the man has an entirely ample com- 
pensation. If he goes through it simply because he is 
unconscious of all that he has missed or indifferent to 
what he might have legitimately enjoyed, then by so 
much has he lessened the dignity of his life. It has 
been by precisely so much less worth having than it 
might have been. 

Of course a love of dignity, unfortunately, like every 
other excellent sentiment, may err in excess as well as 
in deficiency. A man may carry it so far in art and 
letters as to become a mere fastidious dilettante, and 
nothing more ; on another side it may degenerate into 
stupid foppery ; while in a third aspect it may grow into 
a hateful and thick-ribbed priggishness. Attention to 
niceties of manner and expression, and to the ornamental 
part of all that we surround ourselves with, is capable 
of absorbing more than a fair share of the mind, and 
of diverting us from what is much more valuable than 
any niceties can ever be. But at the present time the 
common tendency is strongly in the other direction. 
A miserable and gratuitous misconception of what the 
rising school of philosophers has so unfortunately named 
Utility gives an unwarranted encouragement to the tend- 
ency. As if every ornament and grace of conduct and 
manner, and even of material surroundings, were not 



THE USES OF DIGNITY. 109 

useful in the very highest sense ! Industry and energy 
and temperance and a sense of justice, and the other 
fundamental virtues of a well-developed character, come 
first. All these things we ought to do, yet not leave the 
others undone. 
10 




CONVENTIONALITIES. 




'ORMS are indispensable to civilized, and even to 
uncivilized, society. Varying greatly in mode, 
but existing universally in fact, their right ap- 
plication is often a mere question of degree. To 
show one's self " unceremonious " in the com- 
pany of strangers would not be the way to ensure social 
success, whilst intimate friends may evince their ami- 
ability by a " sans ceremonie " which, however, must 
restrain itself within the discreetest and most cautious 
limits. Free-and-easiness requires the utmost tact and 
delicacy in its exercise. Moreover, blunt, frank and 
outspoken people do not always appreciate the same 
qualities in others. On many occasions it is great folks 
only — or at least superiors — who dare venture to utter 
exactly what they think, still less to act exactly as they 
wish. The conventional forms of the time, the place 
and the situation instantly start up to hold them in check. 
Propriety, ceremonial and received usages are despotic, 
admitting no appeal from their inflexible code. Still, 
it will be ever a question of degree to be regulated by the 
sliding scale of time and opportunity. In proof of 
which there is nothing less polite, nothing which makes 
a nearer approach to an insult, than over-politeness; 
no 



CONVENTIONALITIES. Ill 

nothing so ungracious as over-graciousness ; no more 
offensive abuse of forms than overstrained formality; 
no better mode of wounding people's proper pride than 
the style of conduct known as " condescension." 

Paradoxical as it may seem, after an interview with 
persons who have charmed you by their " simple man- 
ners" you can rarely or never, on cool reflection, say they 
have been " unceremonious," " sans ceremonie," regard- 
less or defiant of established forms ; quite the contrary. 
Only, their observance of social ceremonial has been so 
polished by the highest art, the ars artem cclare, the art 
of concealing art, that you experienced the pleasing 
effect without observing the means by which it was 
attained. For instance, ill persons known and admired 
for their agreeable and "simple" manners you never 
notice any breach of the conventionalities, although you 
may never detect in them the attitudes of the drilling- 
master or the ways of the mistress of deportment. The 
truth is, they have passed through all that long ago, and 
have it so thoroughly at their fingers' ends that they 
trouble their heads no more about it. These simple- 
mannered persons, nevertheless, see in you the slightest 
infraction of etiquette — and note it too — without your 
being aware of the circumstance. 

Forms of etiquette and codes of ceremonial, therefore, 
also serve as a sort of freemasonry, by which members 
of good society in general (or members of coteries claim- 
ing to be subdivisions of good society) instantly know 
whether a stranger who happens to be presented to them 
is " one of us " or not. Half a word, a slight gesture, 
the most trifling action, serves to settle all doubt nega- 
tively ; and as little, or a very little more, will often call 
forth an affirmative verdict, as in the case of the lady 
who was allowed to be a lady simply because she helped 



112 CONVENTIONALITIES. 

lemon-pudding with a s*poon instead of cutting it with 
a knife and fork. 

It is very easy, and sounds very noble, to abuse con- 
ventionalities, but without them the world would be 
much less pleasant, and probabty much more wicked, 
than it is. The way in which most of them grow up is 
obvious and simple. Civilized society has now been in 
existence for a great number of years, and each genera- 
tion has the advantage of the experience of many gen- 
erations that have gone before. It has been long ago 
discovered that it is for the general benefit of the com- 
monwealth that its individual members should be hon- 
est, moral and well-conducted ; and the sharp instrument 
with which society has dug round its own interests, and 
the interests of its ruling classes, is called law or morality 
accordingly as we regard it from the point of view of the 
legislator or the moralist. The broad black belt of 
shadow inside which all that society considers precious 
is carefully entrenched serves to mark clearly and defi- 
nitely the line across which no profane foot should, with 
impunity, pass. When Romulus built Rome, the fable 
relates how Remus, in a spirit of defiance, leapt across the 
furrow that was to be the foundation of the future wall, 
and how Romulus at once struck the daring intruder 
down. Mr. Macaulay's schoolboy, a few years ago, 
would have been taught to look upon the mystical act 
as a type of tyranny and lawlessness, but scholars have 
at last found out the meaning of the sacredness attached 
by the builder of a city to the little furrow which the 
plough had drawn round his settlement. Society, in 
punishing the criminal, is only following the example 
of Romulus. The social furrow may be small, or even 
imaginary, but it is not the less a matter of necessity 
that its integrity should be jealously guarded and prer 



CONVENTIONALITIES. 113 

served. Nor is the vindication of the actual frontier- 
line enough. The world has noticed, to its cost, that 
outworks beyond the frontier-line are essential to its 
peace and welfare. There are many thoughtless people 
who might not be aware that they were transgressing 
until they had actually committed themselves to the 
fatal step, were it not for those premonitory fortifications 
that are designed to warn us how very near we are getting 
to the sacred and inevitable belt of shadow. Outside the 
belt, society, therefore, places a zone of less distinct color, 
which it calls Conventionality, and which serves the 
same purpose as the danger-signal performs for the ap- 
proaching train. The philosopher who inveighs against 
conventionalities, to be consistent, ought also to object 
to danger-signals. The neglect of them may, in some 
cases, lead to no catastrophe, but unless they w r ere 
habitually obeyed the world would suffer under twenty 
times as many accidents, collisions and faux pas. 

Perhaps no conventionalities are based on a better 
or a more sound foundation than the conventionalities 
that hamper the intercourse of men and women, and 
against which feminine enthusiasts are to be heard so 
often complaining. A woman who is a genius, or who 
fancies she has a vocation for working like a man, is in- 
dignant at seeing in the eyes of her acquaintances that 
she is expected to conform to a hundred trivial regula- 
tions which she despises and would like to disregard. 
She would like to be able to travel. to and fro in unpro- 
tected freedom, to visit when and where she pleases, and 
to receive her friends of both sexes at all hours of the 
day and night. Una went about quite safely with her 
lion, and why should^ not any young lady who is as pure 
and as high-minded as Una do precisely the same? 
Women forget that the reason why Una was so safe was 
10* H 



114 CONVENTIONA LITIES. 

because she had her lion with her. And conventionality 
is only another name for Una's familiar lion. This in- 
valuable protector keeps at a distance the host of pay- 
nims and false knights who otherwise would steal in 
and take advantage of the peripatetic heroine while she 
was not thinking, or was writing poems, or was reform- 
ing her fellow-creatures, or was asleep. No woman can 
or ought to know very much of the mass of meanness 
and wickedness and misery that is loose in the wide 
w r orld. She could not learn about it without losing the 
bloom and freshness which it is her mission in life to 
preserve. 

All conventionalities represent the settled convictions 
of society about the contingent dangers to which 
society is liable, and therefore are, prima facie, to be 
respected. Even black hats and dress-coats may, from 
this point of view, be looked on as admirable insti- 
tutions. Both are rather uncomfortable w 7 ays of remind- 
ing those who use them that uniformity in dress is not 
a bad thing. They preserve us from the vagaries of in- 
dividual caprice in matters wherein good taste is of some 
real importance. It is evidently most undesirable that 
men and women should be left to cover themselves just 
as they happen to think right. The wisest thing is to 
have some standard to which individuals should approx- 
imately conform; and, though a black hat is not beau- 
tiful in itself, it is better that all gentlemen should wear 
black hats than that they should decorate themselves at 
their own sweet will. People think it decorous to wear 
tailed coats at evening-parties, and we can fancy the sen- 
sation that, would be made by going out to dinner a few 
times in a dressing-gown or a tweed suit. Some men 
vindicate their right to exemption from conventional 
formalities by letting their hair grow to any length it 



CONVENTIONALITIES. 115 

pleases, or by wearing strange headgear and coats fear- 
fully and marvelously made. The enemies of the insti- 
tution, which it may be admitted is not free from defects, 
ought to consider whether uniformity is not an object ; 
and if so should be ready to point out some better form 
which uniformity might take. When the} 7 do so, so- 
ciety will doubtless be ready to welcome the proposed 
emendation. It is not too much to assert that some 
conventionalities are in this way a danger-signal against 
something. If any one instance can be proved to be to- 
tally useless, it is time, no doubt, to change it. But the 
introduction of the change had better be left to society, 
and individuals will wisely accept the maxim imposed 
upon them till they get a better. The law has a whole 
repertory of presumptions which have been found use- 
ful and admirable, and sound sense might teach us to add 
to the number of legal fictions the unwritten but in- 
valuable maxim, " Everything is to be presumed in favor 
of a conventionality." 




MANNERS. 




I HE moralists of the last century were in the habit 
of giving a prominence and importance to the sub- 
ject of manners which we do not meet with now. 
Manners must, indeed, be an interesting and mo- 
mentous question at all times, but we do not 
find the duty of good manners and the practical value 
of attractive ones pressed upon us now in the same way, 
or at least not by the same class of teachers. A fine 
manner cannot now set itself off by contrast, nor need 
people become affected (that is, assume a manner) to 
escape being vulgar. Before they had settled into a 
certain uniform propriety manners were unquestionably 
more in men's minds. The terms " fine gentleman," 
"elegant manners," "genteel," even "gentlemanly," if 
applied not to mind but to external polish, we all reject 
as old-fashioned, as belonging to the past, to a different 
and, as we think, less advanced stage than our own. If 
people want to express the same ideas now, they take 
refuge in slang, and are unwilling to treat them as grave 
questions involving a moral, or as though their own 
manners were influenced by direct thought, and were 
not the happy result of merit or fortunate circumstances. 
But a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago man- 
lie 



MANNERS. 117 

ners were an acknowledged topic, with a fitting vocab- 
ulary ; they were made an avowed point in education, 
with distinct rules, and were an admitted question in the 
case of each individual. We suspect that a good man- 
ner of that period would appear to us extremely arti- 
ficial, an elaborate performance, the result of conscious 
care, seeming to invite observation, and therefore a fit 
subject for criticism, praise and censure. We still know 
it to be important, but no moral authority amongst 
the ladies of our own day would venture, with Mrs. 
Delany, to rank a good manner next to religion and 
morality. 

Dr. Johnson describes, with a sort of envy which does 
not obscure his admiration, a manner of perfect address. 
It has a touch of patronage and condescension which 
would not be acceptable to our ideas, but we believe it a 
truthful picture of a good manner when manner was 
treated as one of the fine arts : u I remarked with what 
justice of distribution he divided his talk to a wide cir- 
cle ; with what address he offered to every man an occa- 
sion of indulging some favorite topic or displaying some 
particular attainment, the judgment with which he reg- 
ulated his inquiries after the absent ; and .... I soon 
discovered that he possessed some science of gracious- 
ness and attraction which books had not taught ;..'.. 
that he had the power of obliging those whom he did 
not benefit-; that he diffused upon his cursory behavior 
and most trifling actions a gloss of softness and delicacy 
by which every one was dazzled ; and that by some oc- 
cult method of captivation he animated the timorous, 
softened the supercilious and opened the reserved. I 
could not but repine at the inelegance of my own man- 
ners, which left me no hopes but not to offend, and at 
the inefficacy of rustic benevolence, which gained no 



118 MANNERS. 

friends but by real service." One distinction suggested 
by this portrait lies at the very portal of our subject : 
there is all the difference between good manners and 
what the writer means to describe as a good manner. 
Good manners are, in homely phrase, the art of always 
knowing how to behave ourselves. A good manner sets 
its possessor off, on all occasions, to the best advantage. 
The one is a habit, the other a power ; the one is de- 
corum, the other grace ; the one secures us from com- 
mitting ourselves, the other confers distinction ; by the 
one we escape giving pain, the other imparts positive 
pleasure ; the one guarantees us from censure and con- 
tempt, the other excites respect and admiration ; by the 
one we pass muster in any company, the other enables 
its possessor to take the lead in it. 

Everybody in a certain sense has a manner of his 
own ; but it is not patent, not a power, not recognized 
or influential in society, like what we would point at or 
that suggested by our quotation from Dr. Johnson. No 
doubt good manners develop and slide into a good man- 
ner under fortunate auspices ; for it needs, and indeed 
must have, a sphere. The woman, for instance, has good 
manners while she is one of many in her father's house ; 
transplanted into a sphere of her own, with room to ex- 
pand, her most insignificant action assumes a certain 
personality ; her manners develop into a manner " full of 
numberless nameless graces ;" and henceforth she takes 
a place and acts a part in society for which no one be- 
fore had guessed her capabilities. There are many peo- 
ple who have aspirations which they have no legitimate 
means of satisfying; and to have a place, a field in 
which a man may air and show himself and work out 
his ideal, is one of these, and a very frequent one. Our 
aspirant has not strength of mind to abide his time or 



MANNERS. 119 

to give up altogether, and so he puts on a sickly growth 
of airs, peculiarities, eccentricities which nothing leads 
up to or accounts for. His ideal collapses for want of 
external nourishment and credit, and in sole return for 
his pains he is brought into injurious comparisons with 
the real thing. It must be owned that credit for man- 
ners in rich and great people, like that for merit and 
good works, is earned often at a mighty small cost. 
Very few people distinguished for rank and position 
are affected, because they have what others aim to pos- 
sess ; an affected king or queen, or potentate of any 
kind, would be a monster; whereas ordinary good-na- 
ture, with the self-respect which the position almost 
necessarily inspires, joined to the atmosphere of good- 
breeding by which rank, and station are surrounded, 
gives every facility for a certain grand or graceful form 
of manners. 

And much more may this be said of a woman equally 
favored by fortune, who has never known the tempta- 
tions of sensitiveness to be ashamed of associates and 
connections ; who has never endured the society of the 
ill-natured and the awkward, whether rustic, dandy 
or simply vulgar, or who has in good time found her- 
self emancipated from these depressing causes ; who can 
choose her friends; who is queen in her drawing-room, 
and can carry out her own ideas of society — arrange, 
direct, organize, be an authority in her own congenial 
circle ; whose notice is favor ; whose conversation is 
valued; whose taste is deferred to; who can bestow a 
hundred slight favors ; whose smile is watched for and 
remembered ; whose frown is serious and carries a 
weight of disapproval. Round such a woman, if she is 
of a genial temperament and cares to be loved, will 
naturally gather an entourage of nameless charms to 



120 MANNERS. 

set her off. Not tempted by the disturbances which dis- 
tract others, not depressed by the subduing causes 
which keep down so many, she will have the courage 
to be herself, and the harmony which results from sweet- 
ness and force — that force which confidence in herself 
creates, and without which there can be no kind of real 
grace. 

We would protest against the too common charge of 
insincerity brought against a charming manner, which 
has first nattered and delighted, and, in the result and 
upon reflection, has been pronounced hollow and mean- 
ing nothing. A charming manner means to please, and 
has no ulterior end in view. It is expecting too much 
to require people, because they are pleasant while we are 
with them, to think of us and act toward us in absence 
with more consistent consideration and regard than our 
less attractive acquaintance ; especially as this very charm 
and pleasantness necessarily implies a mind present to 
each passing scene, and able to occupy itself with every 
new claim to its attention. Let us remember that we 
ourselves should not have been so agreeably entertained 
had our attractive acquaintance suffered- his thoughts, 
while in our company, to run on absent friends — the 
habit of some conscientious minds, deficient in tact and 
sympathy, through which they contrive to give to each 
friend by turns the notion that others are preferred to 
himself. A little reflection will induce more modest and 
reasonable expectations. He has been acting on the 
golden rule, that in society every one should endeavor 
to make himself as agreeable as possible ; and the true 
act of doing so, we are told on high authority, is "to 
appear well pleased with those you are engaged with." 
After all, it is a great thing that those with whom we 
are thrown should wish to please us, even by the little 



MANNERS. 121 

unconscious, instinctive ruse of seeming to be pleased. 
For that all these arts, where they delight us, are un- 
conscious we fully believe, and yet they cannot be other- 
wise described; as where our authority speaks of the 
true art of being agreeable in company, and then corrects 
himself in a parenthesis — " and yet there can be no such 
thing as art in it " — so quick, subtle and undefinable 
are the influences which direct thought and expression, 
and which yet must be traced up to the direct agency 
of the will at last. 

We believe it will be found that people will be valued 
a good deal at the rate they set on themselves : we do 
not mean what persons aim at, desire for themselves, 
but what their actions show they rate themselves at. Many 
people will take infinite pains to win from others a favor- 
able judgment which they do not show themselves to 
share in. They have a craving for a high stand in their 
fellow-creatures' estimation, and yet cannot bring them- 
selves to prove by their actions that they believe it their 
due. They hope to win the respect of others, and yet 
betray a want of self-respect. They let it be seen that 
their standard is the opinion of others, not self-approval. 
Thus they will treat themselves ill when nobody is by ; 
they will descend when it can be done on the sly ; they 
will cut a figure to the world and be pitiful in private ; 
they will have a fine outside, and let things be shabby 
and out of keeping underneath ; not from parsimony, 
but from a feeling that anything will do for themselves 
so long as nobody else is the wiser. That is, there is a 
constant little secret : the world is not to know the small 
shifts self is put to, which do not seem to matter while 
nobody knows. 

Now, this secret will always betray itself some way or 
other, and entirely stand in the way of the calm, easy, 
11 



122 MANNERS. 

grand manner. The consciousness that everything about 
us will stand inspection, that the outside is an index of 
what is within, imparts ease, grace and self-possession ; 
while some touch — however faint, all but imperceptible — 
of sneaking or bluster will tinge the manner, conscious 
of something wrong out of sight; though we admit that 
naturally sensitive minds will be afflicted with this 
consciousness much sooner than others. Miss Austen's 
" Emma " maintained that she could always tell by what 
conveyance Mr. Knightly had come to a dinner-party, 
on the argument that there is always a look of consci- 
ousness or bustle when people come in a waj r that they 
know to be beneath them. She detected an effort to 
strike the balance with himself for having done what 
was beneath his fortune and figure in the world. We 
are not blaming persons who cheat themselves (not as 
religious self-denial, but) thereby to make a better ap- 
pearance in the eyes of others People of small means 
are constantly so placed as to make this almost a matter 
of necessity. A thorough harmony, a pervading correct- 
ness, would, in a great many people, cost more time and 
thought than with their peculiar temperament they have 
leisure and patience for; but all must see the enormous 
advantage persons of fortune and station possess in the 
particular of manner, who have every appointment in 
absolute order, who have no makeshifts — nothing loose, 
incomplete or shabby about them ; who can stand a 
thorough inspection, who can never be taken by surprise 
or caught unawares, over others who associate with them 
perhaps, and assume so far to be of their standing, but 
who must throw all their expense on what catches the 
eye of others, and endure the pinch of all shortcomings 
in their proper person ; who never like to be caught, and 
who would not be seen without preparation. And most 



MANNERS. 123 

people must be able to recall some pleasant contrast to 
all this — some little menage where these disturbing causes 
are counteracted by a vigilant self-respect — some modest 
home of exact, unfailing neatness and pure trim pro- 
priety, where nothing is sacrificed to externals, where 
there are no concealments, and in which the inmates 
are willing to let the world see them all day long and 
follow them in their busiest employments. And here 
we believe they will have also admired the self-possessed 
dignity and repose of manner in the ruling spirit of this 
fair scene of order. 

We grant that in case of limited means this result 
cannot be obtained without a considerable outlay of 
time and thought — what many would consider waste of 
time. Hand and eye must be habituated to see defects 
before others see them, and to be beforehand with decay. 
A certain fastidiousness of neatness and taste must be 
encouraged, and the law of order allowed to take a first 
place — to have its first turn, so to say — in the business of 
life. Of course all these are essentially feminine arts — 
we have necessarily a woman in our eye — but the benefits 
of her system do not rest with her. The man with such 
a wife acquires a reliance in his home which gives se- 
curity and ease to his deportment; while the woman, 
confident in her surroundings — whose delicate cultivated 
sense of propriety has brought all things into harmony 
about her, who has permitted no finery which is not a 
natural efflorescence, who has arranged everything not 
mainly to meet other eyes, but to satisfy her innate love 
of neatness and grace, her desire that all about herself 
should be attuned to a certain law of fitness — is almost 
sure to have a good manner. It will be self-possessed, 
because there are no underhand wounds to self-respect 
on her consciousness ; it will be without effort, for the 



124 MANNERS. 

habits of her mind are all opposed to display ; it will 
be easy and graceful, for there are no counteracting in- 
fluences to impose restraint. 

We all of us have our place, where it is to be hoped 
we pass muster. Most of our acquaintance do very well 
to see them in their ordinary circumstances— amongst 
their own friends, at their own work, in their own draw- 
ing-room and family circle. In these familiar scenes 
their words and actions, their talk and their silence, 
their gravity and their mirth, their postures, gait and 
address, all harmonize. But put them into new scenes, 
amongst strangers, where they are uncertain of their 
position, where they feel that they have to assert them- 
selves, and where they will be judged by the figure they 
make, then ease and harmony of manner are apt to 
forsake them, and hence awkwardness, eccentricities, 
obtrusiveness and shyness. There are people who do 
excellently well in the country who astonish us by a 
general air of failure and unfitness in city society, while 
the man of the city does not look less out of place in a 
country circle. 

There are men who are lords of all they survey in 
morning costume, who hide their diminished heads in 
the restraint of a dress-coat. Is it too much to say that 
dress may have something to do with the ease and savoir 
faire of the grand manner ? The habit of changing from 
one costume to another, involved in a full alternate par- 
ticipation in all the pursuits and pleasures of city and 
country, must facilitate that feeling of being one. and 
the same under all circumstances so essential to ease ; 
while, the practice of assimilating every garb to the idea 
of self, and establishing a feeling of real ownership and 
mastery, goes far to give composure, dignity and even 
elegance to the deportment. Joe Gargery is described 



MANNEES. 125 

as looking cowed and desponding in his Sunday clothes ; 
they oppressed and overpowered him ; the clothes had, ' 
in fact, the ascendant. There is no dress, however fan- 
tastic, however novel, however homely or gorgeous, that 
a fine gentleman will not subdue to an absolute subordi- 
nation; nothing shall be able to hide or disguise him; 
he shall be supreme, able to cast off each in turn, and 
be himself alike in all. Thus, not only the taste and 
quality, but also the variety, of his costume sets him off 
if he is master of his art. 

No doubt the sensitive temperament subjected to this 
discipline has a good deal to go through, and probably 
never attains to the perfection of manner. A man of 
taste and refinement knows how to act under every cir- 
cumstance; but when it comes to knowledge — when a 
man betrays by the least sign of stiffness or embarrass- 
ment that he is thinking how to move, how to stand, 
how to look — the triumph of manner is over. He is 
one of ourselves — no longer the superior being, lifted b} r 
nature and circumstances out of the range of our little 
difficulties. It is the intuitive perception of the right 
thing to do and say sometimes attributed to high birth 
— w r hat is meant by an aristocratic bearing — which 
"snobs" are so often reproached for worshiping. Well, 
we think there is something to say for their reverence and 
for their unavailing envy. To be one's self everywhere, 
everywhere at home— amongst ladies, amongst public 
men, amongst the learned, the fashionable, the idle, the 
precise — to be neither obtrusive nor shy nor uncomfort- 
able — to be right without thinking of it, as a matter of 
course, because it is ourself, — what a convenient and 
enviable faculty or power! Or is it only a knack? 
With some people it looks, after all, very much like it. 
This is the manner for the weak, the timid and over- 
11 * 



126 MANNERS. 

sensitive to envy ; but what is really worthy of our ad- 
miration is something different still. 

There are two sorts of fine manners : the one which 
expresses an easy sense of fitness for every company — 
lofty, a shade supercilious, but really good — the manner 
caricatured in the portraits of " swells," and only service- 
able to the owner ; the other of a cast already alluded 
to, which confers benefit on others, and which must pro- 
ceed from deeper and kindlier sources than self-apprecia- 
tion, self-respect and the habit of good company — one 
which, if it does not imply a more excellent nature than 
common, shows a nature whose best qualities are now 
within our reach — a gift to society — the manner which 
conveys to us the idea that we are worth pleasing, that 
we have inspired an interest and wakened sympathy. 
We rise in our own opinion in such a presence; we feel 
ourselves appreciated, our powers are quickened, we are 
at ease and show ourselves at our best. What is it that 
makes some women so charming, some men so pleasant? 
— what quality that diffuses an aroma, an influence as 
of rose-leaves about them? — that manifests itself in hands 
that receive us with graceful warmth, in. eyes that beam 
with kindly pleasure, in smiles so genuine, so tender in 
the general radiance of reception? What a benignant 
sunshine of welcome! how soothing to be cared for! 
how easily the time passes ! 

And what constitutes this charm ? for we are not sup- 
posing it to arise from any deep moral or intellectual 
superiority, which, truth to say, does not often exhibit 
itself in this way. Surely it is a natural sweetness, an 
inherent tenderness of sympathy — pervading rather 
than deep — acting upon a desire to please. There are 
some persons on whom society acts almost chemically, 
compelling them to be charming. It is part of them- 



MANNERS. 127 

selves to meet advances, to labor in their graceful way 
to create a favorable impression and to give pleasure; 
and yet perhaps our arrival was, after all, ill-timed, our 
approach was not welcome, we interrupted, we necessi- 
tated an effort. If at night we could overhear our 
friend's summary of the day, we might find ourselves 
classed as one of its troubles and hindrances, and, as we 
have said, we might unjustly feel a twinge of ill-usage. 
But is it not something not to have been made un- 
comfortable at the time — to have spent a happy hour 
instead of sitting on thorns, as with certain of our ac- 
quaintance we should inevitably have been made to do ? 
They are not necessarily more sincere because they take 
no pains to conceal that we are in their way. The kindly 
welcomer has been as true to his character all the while 
as our surly friend has been to his. It would have cost 
too much, it would have been impossible for him to be 
ungracious. Thus he is neither insincere, for he has 
sincerely wished to please, nor, what might seem the 
other alternative, affected, for he has been acting accord- 
ing to his nature. 

Many people are called affected who are only, as we 
say, self-conscious — who are so constituted that they can- 
not quite forget themselves — who under no circumstances 
whatever could be thoroughly oblivious of how and why 
they act in little as well as great things. Now, in all 
this they are not acting against nature, for nature has 
made them thus, and they are not solicitous to look like 
something or somebody else ; they only wish not to mis- 
represent and do themselves injustice. It is no merit 
in some people to be simple and easy ; it is no fault in 
others to be sensitive and forced into ill-timed specula- 
tions as to words and movements. The first have it in 
comfort and general favor, but they do not necessarily 



128 MANNERS. 

have it in morality. The one may be as single-minded, 
as little bent on pretence or display, as the other. All 
his care may be not to commit himself, not to produce 
an unfavorable impression — to do justice to good in- 
tentions. 

There is no harm, indeed, in a direct endeavor to do 
well. Nay, we can hardly withhold praise from this 
sort of study on particular occasions. It has added 
greatness to the great occasions of great men's lives; 
and Caesar, wrapping his robe about him as he fell, 
vigilant even in that supreme moment to do nothing 
unbecoming, invests the whole scene with a noble de- 
corum, which constitutes the last movement, the last 
folding of his hands, an adequate consummation of an 
heroic career. Jeremy Taylor somewhere tells of a 
Spanish noble who on his way to the scaffold incurred 
the rebuke of his confessor for the care with which he 
disposed the folds of his cloak so as not to interfere with 
the dignity of his last ascent to the last elevation. But 
it is to be assumed that men who took such pains to do 
themselves credit in their death must have lived in a 
certain habit of intention and design— with an ideal of 
chivalrous grace, dignity and refinement — with a care to 
do nothing unbecoming pretty constantly before them. 
There may be in every society manners of this order — 
never, we trust, to be tested by the poniard or the scaf- 
fold — which, without affectation, may, from the same 
causes, be cast in a mould distinct from the ordinary 
and more natural one; and which may be valuable as 
keeping up the general standard and preventing ease 
from degenerating into carelessness and want of con- 
sideration for the claims of others. 

Apart from characteristic graces, we should say that 
he must have the best manner who has the most perfect 



MANNERS. 129 

and impartial perception on this one point — his own 
claims and the claims of others; and if an obtrusive 
and formal politeness errs on the one side, modern negli- 
gence may very well betray us into an opposite extreme. 
In youth, especially, we would observe that too much 
ease is, in all cases, a bar to excellence. Is it that ease 
should follow, not precede, any acquirement, and that 
an easy style in boyhood of writing, talking and acting 
results from not seeing the real difficulties that stand in 
the way of doing anything well? Or that timidity and 
a certain backwardness are essential stages of moral im- 
maturity which must go before a ripe completeness? 
We find the authority we have before quoted, Mrs. 
Delany, who was by common consent mistress of the 
art of good manners in her own time, greatly prefer for 
her young niece any amount of awkwardness arising 
from timidity to a " too forward and pert genteelness." 
On the same principle, we should not augur ill for 
the future elegance of that young lady t whose nervous 
tremors, as she sat by Sydney Smith at dinner, he, with 
characteristic good nature, endeavored to allay : " I ob- 
serve you crumble your bread ; when I dine with the 
archbishop of Canterbury I crumble my bread with both 
hands." 

Not that real awkwardness is tolerable long, but here 
women have a permanent advantage over men. Not 
only does timidity in them naturally find more graceful 
expression, but they can generally find something legiti- 
mate to do with their hands — some little occupation with 
the needle, the shuttle or the fan to mitigate the pains 
of embarrassment from which men's hands have no safer 
refuge than the pocket ; most other expedients proving a 
worse and often mischievous alternative. And if hands 
are a difficulty to the shy man, what can we say of legs, 

I 



130 MANNERS. 

which we presume women need never think of as an 
encumbrance at all ? Where is he to put them ? — how is 
he to keep them in order, so that they shall not betray 
the perplexity of his soul ? What an infinite variety of 
bad tricks with these particular members does not the 
demon of sheepishness suggest to its victim in the hour 
of trial ! What postures ! what oscillations ! Who does 
not remember that curate immortalized in Shirley who, 
in the critical moment of courtship, contrived with his 
own hands to tie his own legs so firmly together with his 
pocket-handkerchief that he could not set himself at 
liberty when retreat from the scene of discomfiture be- 
came essential? 

But this is too painful a subject to be more than 
touched upon ; for what sensitive mind is not haunted 
by the fear of now and then committing himself in the 
same kind, though not in the same degree ? while on our 
part it is only common courtesy to our readers to assume 
them quite free and exempt from such extreme cases of 
ill-manners. There are other tricks, however, which we 
suspect in a measure pervade all society. One that es- 
pecially belongs to natural, transparent characters we 
will mention as proving the advantage of a more system- 
atic watchfulness than such persons commonly bestow, 
or than is thought essential, as it used to be. We mean 
the habit of interruption. It will be acknowledged to 
be a breach of good manners to interrupt others while 
they are speaking, but it is often by an effort that we ab- 
stain from doing so — an effort which, if we are conscious 
of sometimes, it is probable we none of us always make. 
No doubt it is a fundamental rule of politeness not to 
break in upon another's discourse. While conversation 
flags and is kept up with difficulty, we take it so much 
as a matter of course that comment and advice on the 



MANNERS. 131 

subject seem superfluous, and perhaps impertinent. But 
let us each consider how often we begin a sentence which 
we are not allowed to finish, and then reflect not on our 
own ill-usage, but on what we possibly inflict on others. 

There are some people who never interrupt — who in 
the full warmth of interesting discussion will allow the 
sentence they are waiting to dispute or to confirm to 
come fairly to an end, without permitting lip or eye or 
motion to betray impatience ; and we know that they 
are rare from being sensible of a new and unusual labor 
in their presence — that of finishing our sentence gram- 
matically and with point ; a task seldom imposed on a 
party of eager disputants discussing a topic in which 
all are interested. And what a sense of courtesy and 
repose it brings ! what a good influence does one of these 
patient listeners infuse around, elaborately refining and 
giving point to conversation ! Each talker by turn re- 
ceives the unusual forbearance as a personal tribute : we 
do not think him courteous ; we believe him interested, 
but are not the less put on our mettle to deserve and to 
reciprocate the agreeable civility. 

We are not speaking of those barbarous invaders, those 
social burglars, who rudely break into a good story or a 
quiet statement of opinion with something wholly irrel- 
evant and trivial of their own, bearing no relation to the 
question, though perhaps each of us knows some in- 
stance to the purpose ; but of those who are too much 
occupied with the interest of the subject to forbear the 
appointed time from expressing their own view — who 
cut short what others have to say without knowing it 
at the time or reflecting upon it after. It has been as- 
serted that this habit must be on the increase or the 
great talkers of past generations could never have existed. 
All the " conversationalists " of fifty or a hundred years 



132 3IANNERS. 

ago must have been nipped in the bud under the blight- 
ing influences of perpetual interruption ; and no doubt 
when good manners were more formal things, implying 
more self-sacrifice, any specialty people had had a bet- 
ter chance of a fair field ; though whether modern hab- 
its will regard this as a loss, and not rather as a gain to 
society — a deliverance from a tyranny and an incubus — 
is a question. 

Even now a genius of this order may have some 
chance if Nature has befriended him with the gift of a 
voice of considerable volume, a powerful organ. No- 
body as society is now constituted can command the 
attention of a mixed company for three minutes (possi- 
bly at no time, for, after all, human nature is always 
the same) without this ally. It must not be a loud voice, 
but it must be one which, having got hold of the ear, 
can keep hold of it by that sort of body and continuous 
sound which so remarkably distinguishes some voices 
from others. We know more than one ready thinker, 
with apt and felicitous words at his command, silenced 
for life by thinness and feebleness of organ — perma- 
nently oppressed and set down by the general habit of 
interruption. A man must be very determined to per- 
sist in saying what he has to say under so enormous a 
disadvantage. 

Another fault of thoughtlessness, closely allied to the 
last, and which, being inelegant, must be concerned with 
our subject, is the habit of connecting the thoughts and 
facts of every sentence with redundant phrases, which 
simply serve to keep up the stream of sound, and so to 
enable the speaker to hold his ground till his mind finds 
fresh supplies. If people were sure of attention, they 
would perhaps not repeat " You know," " Do you see ?" 
" And so," or again the name of the person addressed, 



MANNERS. 133 

with such wearying persistence. We should like to put 
one of these eager, untidy talkers in constant communi- 
cation with an entirely patient listener, just to try the 
experiment whether a sense of leisure would not subdue 
this hurry of talk, and the tongue learn to restrain itself 
into keeping pace with the thinking faculty, and thus 
all that is senseless and distracting in his sentences — or 
may we say hers, for the fault is a frequent feminine one? 
■ — be gradually eliminated. It was once the masculine 
habit to intersperse oaths merely as stop-gaps to give 
continuity and force to commonplace ; and we read of a 
conversation carried on in this method which was taken 
down by a short-hand writer behind the screen, and 
which, being afterward read in cold blood, was admitted 
by the speakers themselves to sound rather like a con- 
ference of fiends than the small-talk of human beings. 
Manners have changed for the better in some important 
points since then; there is nothing diabolical, we are 
happy to think, in the waste and superfluities of modern 
discourse, but the same result as to proportion might be 
found in some instances, as where ten sheets full of 
"abominable interpolations" were reduced to two of 
rational conversation. 

It has been our object to regard manners, on their ex- 
ternal side, as an accomplishment — as a key to social 
respect and favor ; but good manners to be worth any- 
thing — indeed, to exist as we would have them — must 
proceed from an inner fount of humanity and honor 
by no means the exclusive possession of the educated 
classes, rather common in exact proportion to all classes, 
and necessarily showing themselves in happy and ap- 
propriate action. 

We have already called new and exceptional positions 
the severest test of manners. The mixture of classes 
12 



134 MANNERS. 

offers this ordeal — using mixture as implying real con- 
tact of mind and feeling. When men mix with their 
social superiors so as to work and act with them in a 
temporary equality, the difficulty lies with the inferior. 
It is comparatively easy to be condescending with pro- 
priety and grace ; it is hard to hit the right mean between 
subservience and forwardness, to blend in a right degree 
self-respect with deference. But how admirably and 
with what tact some men carry themselves under these 
circumstances ! with what a nice appreciation of the 
claims of either side ! 

Nothing is more certain than that a good manner 
should represent the character, not hide it, as the man- 
ners of the great and observed are so often designed to do. 
It should have leave to play in natural and easy action, 
and should seem, and through habit be, spontaneous. 
For the rest, every reader's definition will probably take 
up points we have neglected, and may even start alto- 
gether on another groundwork ; while the infinite variety 
of faults in manner, the various shades of error — such as 
the preoccupied, the vain, the exacting, the languid, the 
negligent, the busy, the fussy, the dawdling, the con- 
descending, all proceeding from habits of mind, but 
showing themselves in distinct and definite actions op- 
posed to politeness and good-breeding, and all charac- 
teristic, not of individuals, but of classes — might furnish 
each a separate disquisition. But into these we do not 
desire to enter; a few general principles are good for us 
all to keep in mind. Our young readers may be sure 
that their friends will not value their thinking qualities 
less for their making themselves more agreeable to gene- 
ral acquaintances. Nor have we feared, in our easy, inde- 
pendent, self-indulgent and self-amusing ways, seemingly 
to advocate some expense of care and thought in ac- 



MANNERS. 



135 



quiring an agreeable manner, when success cannot be 
gained but through imparting pleasure, ease and com- 
fort to those with whom we associate or in any way 
have to do. 




AGREEABLE PEOPLE. 



d'm T is only in the first stages of acquaintance that 
41 we consider much whether a person is agreeable. 
iJ'J Afterward, the term must fail in adequately ex- 
pressing the gratification derived from an inter- 
change of ideas between old and valued friends. 
When such have lived long together and known each 
other thoroughly, far deeper and more important quali- 
ties, intellectual as well as moral, are brought into play, 
which cast any consideration of mere agreeableness far 
into the background. Restricting, therefore, the influence 
of agreeableness to somewhat of a more or less superficial 
and temporary character, we may remark also that per- 
sons are often agreeable without possessing any great 
conversational powers or any astounding erudition. 
The impression of agreeableness is so entirely relative or 
subjective that the main condition toward producing it 
does not consist in talking either deeply or lightly, nor 
in any positive rule for alternating humor with seri- 
ousness, but simply in adapting our conversation to the 
tastes, capacities and particular circumstances or tem- 
perament of the persons whom we address. A fashion- 
able young lady, a typical country gentleman and an 
average literary man relish widely-removed divergencies 

136 



AGREEABLE PEOPLE. 137 

of topic and sentiment. The lady may require drawing 
out — a process which the litterateur is nearly sure to re- 
sent, A few anecdotes of the Joe Miller stamp will not 
be misplaced with the squire, and may provoke and 
find much geniality where finer sarcasms have fallen 
pointless. But hardly any other class of listeners will 
tolerate an anecdotal vein of conversation which, next 
to mediocre argument, is of all speech the most weari- 
some. 

No doubt, when we estimate the agreeableness of the 
opposite sex, or when they judge of ours, much is par- 
doned to good looks and much required of ugliness ; 
but in our present remarks we intend to eliminate, as 
far as possible, such secondary and disturbing forces as 
the flirtational element and its, kindred infinitesimal 
phases tend constantly to introduce into our subject. 
It is therefore the safer test of being really agreeable 
when a woman- pleases her own sex and a man his male 
companions; for certainly when a half-educated young 
lady meets an equally ill-informed young gentleman, 
the easiest and perhaps most natural, direction for their 
talk will be that which verges more or less upon flirta- 
tion. For this are sometimes substituted endless per- 
sonal discussions, sweeping verdicts on common friends 
or acquaintances, with much frivolous incidental gossip. 
And there is little doubt that by flirting and gossiping 
many a spurious reputation for agreeableness has been 
acquired. Still, we must repeat that the most agree- 
able people are certainly not the most learned. Our 
experience of astute scientists and double-first-class men 
would often suggest a directly opposite conclusion. It 
is no doubt somewhat hard to require a heavily-weighted 
mathematician to provide conversational amusement for 
a young lady fresh from the nursery. The preliminary 

12* 



138 AGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

stage of small talk is an insuperable obstacle to the mind 
of many a self-conscious philosopher. Should he get 
tolerably well through the necessary prelude of plati- 
tude and meteorology, the rest of the business is, then, 
no reason why he should not diverge into any subject 
he pleases, provided he does not talk too long or too 
deeply. Every one not absolutely inane and stolid has 
one subject at least on which he ought to converse 
pleasantly, and on which he probably will converse 
more or less instructively. Yet many an agreeable man 
is least agreeable on his particular speciality As in 
whist one should play entirely for one's partner, so, to 
be agreeable, we should select not those topics on which 
we natter ourselves we are especially brilliant, but such 
as our auditor is likely to be able to return our lead in 
with advantage to his or her self. 

Each of the main principles of agreeableness de- 
generates, when pushed to excess, into its appropriate 
phase of boredom. Thus, although it is often highly 
judicious and perfectly safe to endeavor with tact to 
detect the particular subject of each new acquaintance 
and gently draw him out thereon, still .there is no more 
aggravated nuisance, in an otherwise pleasantly organized 
circle, than the assiduous information-monger — we mean 
one who perpetually buttonholes the company in gene- 
ral, or endeavors to pick their brains individually. 
Some unfortunate lawyer is detained half an hour in 
some dark corner to answer the most trivial questions 
on some popular legal fallacy. An equally miserable 
clergyman has to stand and deliver on the Essays and 
Reviews; and so on ad infinitum. A kindred avidity for 
information culminated with an acquaintance of our 
own, who once asked in all seriousness an extremely 
illiterate turnpike-keeper in a rural district to what ex- 



AGREEABLE PEOPLE. 139 

tent the invention of steam and the multiplication of 
railroads had reduced the highway traffic through the 
country. Need we say that the man's reply was not 
satisfactory, nor indeed such as we should care to set 
down ? The fact is, that people invariably dislike being 
questioned abruptly in mixed society or on a first intro- 
duction about their profession or peculiar occupation, 
though a blunderer is sure to blurt out some rough query 
of this kind in his first sentence. Goethe used to grow 
excessively rude when called upon in public to explain 
certain passages of Faust or Werther ; and many a lesser 
celebrity has hard enough trials to undergo from the im- 
pertinent curiosity of a lion-hunting public, impressed 
with a firm conviction that whoever has done anything 
noteworthy becomes forthwith, body and soul, public 
property, to be mauled and worried at their good 
pleasure. 

It may be often convenient, and it is to a certain ex- 
tent meritorious, to possess a facility for turning on an 
inexhaustible supply of conversational trivialities when 
brought in contact with an utterly stolid circle or com- 
panion. Such persons will leave the whole trouble in 
your hands, merely contributing as their quota mono- 
syllabic replies or an occasional snubbing denial. To 
make any way at all against such adverse wind and tide 
commands some respect, or at least a respectful com- 
miseration. But the best of being really agreeable is, not 
to have got on adequately well with the very stupidest 
people and under the most discouraging circumstances — 
not to have elicited some faint sparks of animation where 
others have battered in vain — but rather in an intelligent 
and competent audience, under various combinations 
and on a multiplicity of subjects, to be able, without 
egotism, to express ourself appropriately and originally, 



140 AGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

to the profit, or at least amusement, of our companions. 
Further, an essential condition toward being agreeable — 
and on this we principally insist — is the absence or 
apparent absence of all effort. Our qualifying clause is 
added because intense practice and excessive pains have 
acquired, in some few instances, a power by which per- 
sons seem to converse easily and spontaneously under 
circumstances of the most artificial effort. Of course 
immense elaboration is necessary before art can thus 
assume the aspect of second nature; and even then 
such professed conversationalists are very apt to overdo 
matters, from a puerile and extreme jealousy of all 
rivalry, and a consequent utter inability to listen. Good 
listeners are supposed to be as indispensable in their 
way as good talkers ; and this, with certain reservations, 
we are prepared to allow. But the real difficulty is to 
know when to talk and when to be silent. Silence may 
be occasionally gold, but is far oftener to be repudiated 
as the most worthless of dross. Thus, in the extempore 
charade — which is, after all, only conversation under 
heightened difficulties — we generally find that either all 
the performers vociferate at once or are stricken with 
dumbness at the same instant. The impromptu stage 
dialogue becomes tolerably easy if one character has 
but the patience to wait for another, and then sufficient 
readiness to strike it when required. 

No one can, however, be generally and in the highest 
sense agreeable without that delicate tact which enables 
a man to appreciate the various tones of mind and 
character with which he is brought in every-day contact. 
With this he must combine a somewhat over-circum- 
spect caution in avoiding all topics likely to give offence. 
Nor must he be without a half-instinctive or intuitive 
perception, at once enabling him to detect, and as quickly 



AGREEABLE PEOPLE. 141 

to efface or correct, any disagreeable jar which an inad- 
vertent expression has produced. One very great con- 
stituent element in the so-called bore is his pertinacious 
unwillingness to abandon an unfortunate or distasteful 
subject. Once fairly started, he must insist on dragging 
it forward both in and out of season. Another sure 
recipe for becoming tedious is to take thought before- 
hand what we shall say — in other words, cram ourselves 
with certain cut-and-dried topics and sentiments. This 
is, however, sure to be detected, and we shall only be 
called prigs for our pains. Thus, with all except a very 
consummate orator those portions of his speech which 
have been learnt by rote are easily enough recognized. 
Glaringly incongruous indeed will be the difference if, 
to the glibness of his earlier periods, the speaker be 
rash enough to append a stumbling and extempore con- 
clusion. We are sorry also to be obliged to confess it, 
but we fear the introduction, or rather insinuation, of 
science into table-talk is, in nine cases out of ten, a bore 
and a failure. People like to take their science, if at all, 
separate from their meals and relaxation. It does not 
generally succeed in fascinating a young lady to explain, 
apropos of ice, what vanilla is, or to illustrate the gravity 
of icebergs on a smaller scale by floating portions of 
Wenham Lake ice in a finger-glass. This is merely the 
old story of the gilded pill or the powder in raspberry 
jam, which only gives us a mortal antipathy to both the 
drug and the palliative. 

The wise man is far from despising the honest, un- 
disguised commonplaces of all work which he uses a 
hundred times a "day in common with the veriest idiot. 
The last seldom gets beyond their convenient reiteration, 
but with an intelligent person they are valuable scaffold- 
ings under whose assistance he builds up many a most 



142 AGREEABLE PEOPLE. 

interesting conversation. No one is cold-blooded enough 
to plunge at once into human nature or aesthetics on 
meeting a person for the first time. The introductory 
ice must be broken somehow, and the commonest and 
roughest implements are most serviceable and best 
adapted for such work. The most obstinate silence or 
the dreariest prosing is, however, often infinitely pref- 
erable to loquacious egotism and the affectation of a 
burdensome self-consciousness. 




CONVERSATION. 




BENEFIT conferred without words is, at the best, 
an ungracious gift. A favor may be enhanced 
tenfold by the terms in which it is conveyed, and 
may, on the other hand, be so clumsily conferred 
as to constitute an insult. The value of Deport- 
ment, so insisted upon by the Messrs. Turveydrop and 
Company, and which is indeed the sole bulwark of the 
inane and incapable, is, after all, but the outwork of a 
man's defence against his fellows ; and that once carried, 
the beleaguered person, unless he has some gift of tongue 
fence, is at once in the power of his adversary. It is the 
knowledge of this fact which makes the class which is 
popularly or unpopularly known as "the swells" — that 
is, individuals removed by fortune from the necessity of 
working, and thereby from the intellectual advantages 
which work entails — so reserved, so dignified, so (to speak 
Teutonically) like as if they had swallowed a poker. 
They do not wish to be questioned. By rigid politeness, 
by hauteur, or by a pretence of insouciance they avoid 
conversation for the same reason as a man whose social 
conduct is what is termed "shady" shrinks from the 
witness-box and avoids cross-examination. They can't 
stand it, and they know it. Similarly, in lower grades 

143 



144 CONVERSATION. 

of society we find male folks called upon after dinner 
for a song (except for the " Silence, gentlemen," which is 
wanting, you might fancy yourself in a tavern) or for a 
speech — a thing prepared beforehand, and no more like 
genuine talk than calico designs resemble the dainty 
foliage of Nature. Such people do not understand the 
use of that little weapon, the tongue, so serviceable for 
offence, for defence, for conciliation. Let me consider 
this last use of it first, though not, alas ! with any ex- 
pectation that the reader will escape the necessity of 
testing its merits in the two other respects. 

However much Mr. Carlyle and others (who, by the 
bye, are themselves rather voluminous in their literary 
works, and what are those but speech set down in writ- 
ing?) may depreciate talk, it is certain that it is the pos- 
session of this faculty which places that gulf between us 
and the brute creation which Mr. Darwin finds it most 
difficult to bridge over. It is talk which initiates all our 
ends; to love, to friendship, it is almost always the 
tongue which is the gateway. The preservation of a 
young woman from the pursuit of a mad bull or the 
rescue of a fellow-creature from drowning are oppor- 
tunities that do not take place in real life so often as in 
novels. The manly yet conciliatory expression of an 
opinion, the eloquent eulogy of a pursuit or the witty 
defence of a pastime — in short a few well-chosen words, 
well spoken, upon any subject — form the best introduction 
to our fellow-creatures, and do more to attract them to 
us than any natural advantage, except indeed the per- 
sonal beauty of a woman. It is the knowledge of the 
power of this latter charm which makes pretty women 
commonly such foolish talkers. They have only to 
show their faces to win at once, not only the attention 
of the wise and witty, but (supposing at least the same 



CONVERSATION. 145 

are of the masculine gender) their countenance and favor. 
Why, then, they argue, should we cultivate the powers 
of speech, when our eyes and lips are more eloquent 
than our tongues ? A question, however difficult it may 
be to answer now convincingly, to which they will one 
day receive a terribly conclusive reply. 

The good looks of a man, as Wilkes said, only avail 
him with a woman, against one better skilled in the art 
of conversation, for the first quarter of an hour; and 
with one of his own sex it may be added for a consider- 
ably less space of time. It was not by his pretty spots 
and gorgeous scales that the serpent persuaded Eve, but 
by the flicker of his forked tongue. It is much easier 
to captivate women, however, than to produce a favorable 
impression on men. The former have almost always 
some enthusiasm to be sympathized with, some accom- 
plishment to be flattered, and they are eager to exhibit 
their likes and dislikes ; the latter are often undemon- 
strative and even suspicious. It is as difficult to please 
them as to tickle trout. 

The greatest colloquial charm that either sex can 
possess is naturalness, but it is as rare as originality 
itself. Nay, I think it is more common for a man to 
think for himself than to express his thoughts with 
openness and simplicity. The creature who talks para- 
doxes to astonish his company, or expresses opinions 
purposely to shock them, is of quite another and much 
more common class. 

The fact which, above all others, is most to be kept in 
view by him who would tC get on in the world" b}r the 
help of his tongue is, that no topic is so pleasing to a 
listener as one that concerns himself; no affairs are so 
interesting as a man's own affairs. To weep with those 
that weep, and to rejoice with those that rejoice, and to 
13 K 



146 CONVERSATION. 

seem to do so from the same cause, is to win the hearts 
of the most reluctant. Even the dyspeptic will be un- 
able to resist you if you talk about the state of h^s 
stomach. I do not say affect a sympathy if you have 
it not, but if you have it let it be seen to the best ad- 
vantage. This is the foundation of the saying that true 
politeness is a branch of Christianity itself. Repress as 
far as possible all egotism. If you are a very great man, 
who, although not personally remarkable, may have been 
brought by the accident of position into the society of 
those who are so — a minister of state, for instance, may 
be a very dull fellow, but he is necessarily brought into 
contact with many interesting people — or if you are your- 
self of acknowledged eminence in any walk of life (save 
a few exceptional cases, such as champion of the prize- 
ring), you may be allowed to use the personal pronoun 
pretty freely; but otherwise let the thing said stand 
upon its own ground. Whether the incident narrated 
has happened to you or not is a matter of no moment 
whatever; your connection with it, believe me, is not 
the slightest consequence one way or the other ; all that 
is told of your personal part in the matter is mere sur- 
plusage, and it is not a case whether surplusage is no 
error. The vulgarity of what are called the "lower 
classes," who use habitually the dramatic form of dia- 
logue ("Well, says I"), is not greater, except in form, 
than that of any educated person who thus offends. 

Even worse than talking of yourself (who at least are 
known to your interlocutor) is the making those who 
are not common acquaintances of yourself and the per- 
son addressed the topic of your conversation. He does 
not want to hear the opinions of your friend Jones (at 
all events as such), nor to be told how much he has a 
year or how little he manages to live upon ; nor does 



CONVERSATION. 147 

any accident that has happened to Jones interest him 
upon Jones's account, although, indeed, yow may so bore 
him with your Jones that he would be glad to hear he 
had cut his throat, and that there was an end of him. 
It is imagined by many of that large class among whose 
acquaintances great men are rare that if the wearisome 
individual is a person of title (an Hon. Jones), that will 
make him and his doings acceptable to all ears; but 
they do not take into account the amount of envy which 
they excite in the breast of their less-favored friend by 
the details of their intimacy with so exalted a person ; 
and besides, incredible as it may seem, there are really 
some people who do not care about Honorables. 

In narrating a story avoid baldness, but be as concise 
as possible ; omit all collateral incidents, such as the fol- 
lowing : " It was in 1832 or 1833 — yes, it must have been 
in '32, because '33 was the year the old mare died, and I 
was driving her down the Widderburn road in a buggy. 
You remember the buggy, Jack? — how the wheel came 
off at the races, you know ; but stay, there were no races 
at that time; where was it? Well, I was driving her in 
the buggy, and a slapping pace we were going, consider- 
ing the state of the road — you know what the Widderburn 
road is, James? — and that the night was dark. When 
I say * dark,' there was half a moon, or perhaps a quarter 
of one. You don't happen to have an almanac for 1832 
in the house, do you, Morris? else I would tell you 
exactly. Well, I had not driven three hundred yards, 
or it might have been four — perhaps it was four; you 
know that second gate upon the left-hand side ?" etc. I 
am a humane man, and do not say that this sort of nar- 
rator should be put to death, but I do think that the 
most authoritative person among his suffering audience 
should be empowered to muzzle or gag the offender, the 



148 



CONVERSATION. 



instrument to be of wash-leather, without spikes, and 
not to exceed six inches broad. It is more than likely 
that the poor creature has nothing to tell — that there is 
no point whatever to be arrived at; but even if there 




was, who would wish it to be attained by such a route? 
It is only a judge who is paid five thousand dollars a 
year expressly to stand it from dull counsel or from 
persons who plead their own causes who ought to be ex- 
posed to this sort of torture, which is not unlike the 
favorite application of drops of water dribbled at long 
intervals upon the head. 

Do not interlard your talk with Greek or Latin quota- 
tions. You know you would not dare to repeat English 
poetry after the same fashion ; why, then, do you take 



CON VERSA riON. 149 

that liberty with a dead language? If your audience is 
a scholarly one, they must have heard it all before ; if 
not, they will not understand you, and you will in that 
case be guilty of an unpardonable breach of good man- 
ners. A still more contemptible exhibition is afforded 
by those persons who insist upon using French terms 
when English ones express their meaning equal! j 7- well. 
When these tidbits are delivered with a rich roll of the 
tongue (to convey the idea of a Parisian accent), and 
even with shrugs of the shoulders and palms of the 
hands thrown outward to complete the local coloring, 
the educated idiot stands confessed. 

While on the subject of phrases I may perhaps sug- 
gest that the repetition of a phrase, in however pompous 
and dogmatic a tone, does not render it more valuable, 
but. on the contrary, is apt to weaken whatever force it 
has originally possessed. Do not lecture. The John- 
sonian period has departed, never to return. Here and 
there the head of a clique or of a college is still permitted 
to address his disciples, as it were, from an elevation, 
but it is a dangerous experiment in a mixed company. 
It is safer even to preach, since in the latter case your 
pretensions, however ill founded, may be respected for 
the sacred origin from which they affect to spring. 

Be modest in your demands upon the attention of 
your company, and while taking good care that no other 
person shall monopolize the conversation, do not fall 
into that error yourself. Let every one say his say 
unless (with his Widderburn road or otherwise) he has 
proved himself incapable. And never interrupt a nar- 
ration merely because you have heard it before your- 
self, although, if the company generally is under the 
harrow, any worm may turn. If the memory is some- 
times a " tremendous engine of conversation," it is also 

13* 



150 CONVERSATION. 

often arrayed against it, and a muttered groan will circle 
round a whole company at the beginning of some old 
stories. 

I need scarcely say that the attempt to spoil the point 
of a narrative by carking objections as to the possibility 
of its occurrence, or the wit of a jest by such a remark as 
" Ay, but it is not spelt so," or " I fancy that came out 
of the papers," can afford no pleasure, but exhibits both 
stupidity and envy. 

In whatever you have to communicate do not strive 
for an audience ; address only your neighbor or the per- 
sons immediately about you. If your colloquial attraction 
is so great as to produce a general silence, do not show 
that you perceive it, but finish what you have to say in 
a modest manner. Never talk for the gallery ; to look 
away from the persons you are immediately addressing, 
in hopes to catch the eyes and ears of others, is the act 
of a person the proper sphere of whose eloquence is a 
tavern. The vanity of the pothouse demagogue can 
never resist this temptation. 

If able to converse on any other subject, please to 
avoid that of wine — the "vintages." In the first place, 
it is five hundred to one that you know nothing about 
it ; and secondly, there are as many gentlemen as igno- 
rant as yourself who insist upon making it their par- 
ticular topic. Do not poach upon their preserves; do 
not add another social nuisance to the many from which 
conversation suffers. Wine is somewhat naturally asso- 
ciated with lovely women, and I would say one word to 
the fast and loose. Permit me to hint upon this delicate 
subject, first, that your good fortune (as you consider it) 
with the fair sex is a matter less interesting to others 
than yourself; and secondly, that those who appreciate 
the topic most have but little confidence in your veracity. 



CONVERSATION. 151 

There is but one thing easier than lying upon this sub- 
ject, and that is to make jokes upon religion. If you 
have no religious convictions yourself, it is probable that 
your neighbor has. You would not venture to ridicule 
his political opinions in his presence ; how much more, 
then, should you respect that which he holds so much 
more sacred ! 

In conversation, in short, we should not only be care- 
ful to avoid all causes of offence, but above all things be 
conciliatory. To evidence our desire to please is to ac- 
complish half our object. 




GOOD TALKING. 



T. AUGUSTINE, we are told, was once asked to 
(TNj% define Time, but he evaded the question by say- 
fgfc/ ing that it was what we all felt, but could none 
^ry of us understand. It is pretty much the same 
with good talking. We all know it when we 
hear it, but nine-tenths of us would be very much puz- 
zled to point out what it was that pleased us in the 
talker — what it was that made us go away with the re- 
mark, " That man knows how to talk." It cannot be 
learning, for learned men are not commonly happy talk- 
ers. Neither is it humor; humorous people are, as 
ladies prettily put it, very trying. It is not satire; for 
satirical people are ill-natured, and as there is nothing 
charming about ill-nature, there can be nothing charming 
about ill-natured conversation. It is not the power of 
graphic description, for graphic description necessitates 
monologue, and everybody hates monologue. There is 
a popular idea that Coleridge was a great talker — mean- 
ing, of course, that he was a good talker (an instance, by 
the way, of the slipshod phraseology so common just 
now) : a great talker he most certainly was, as many 
knew to their cost; a good talker he most decidedly 
was not. He would soliloquize and rhapsodize, and ram- 

152 



GOOD TALKING. 153 

Me on " from morn till dewy eve, a summer's day,' 1 in 
a rich, mellow voice which few who have heard can ever 
forget. Period after period he would roll out — no doubt 
brilliant, with boundless wealth of illustration, laden 
with an enormous mass of acquired knowledge that 
Magliabecchi himself might have envied ; but Coleridge 
could not talk. De Quincey was just the same ; he could 
keep his auditors up a whole night with that silvery 
voice of his* and if they had the patience and admira- 
tion — and, we may add, the constitution — of a Boswcll, 
they might, without much harm, have preferred him to 
the sleep that would probably have done them more 
good than his eloquent but very shaky ideas of the 
Kantian philosophy. Then there was Macaulay, who 
talked, as Sydney Smith said, "like a book in breeches.'' 
And Mackintosh, who would go through all the merits 
and demerits of the Schoolmen from Abelard to Occham 
— knock you down with a quotation from Thomas 
Aquinas, and pick you up again with another from the 
" Summa Theologise," and who had a mind like a mag- 
azine, with shells of knowledge of every description 
stowed away in their proper compartments, all loaded 
and labeled, and ready to fire off at a minute's notice, 
with powers of conversation to match. And there was 
Diderot, " with the most encyclopedic head ever known 
to be on human shoulders," who could talk down any 
savant in Paris, though endowed with 

A hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, 

And throats of brass, inspired with iron lungs. 

In the more convivial walks of conversationalism we 
have Theodore Hook, with his sparkling puns and mar- 
velous anecdotes; Lamb, with his quaint jokes and end- 
less fund of old English literature; and Brougham, who 



154 GOOD TALKING. 

would give you in the same breath a parallel between 
Cicero and Demosthenes, a criticism on the fourth can- 
to of " Childe Harold," and a practical dissertation on 
sheep-shearing. But they had all the same defect: like 
Cowley's brook, they would "flow, and as they flowed, 
for ever would flow on ;" but they knew no more of real 
talking than Mr. Odgers knows of Greek or Mr. Martin 
Tupper of poetry. 

Of the two sexes, I should say that, upon the whole 
and in the long run, women were, cseteris paribus, superior 
to men as conversers. For even admitting (what I think 
is very doubtful) that they are not generally so well read, 
and have not so many ideas to communicate as men, 
their moral and intellectual constitution enables them 
when in society to make a better use of the materials 
they possess, and that for several reasons : First, because 
they are less egotistical, and also less selfish than men ; 
consequently they have less of that mauvaise honte which 
so often makes the latter silent or awkward in company. 
For the same reason they are also Less likely to be ab- 
sorbed with their own ideas and opinions, and to treat 
slightingly those of another. Then they have stronger 
sympathies, greater tact and more readiness and pres- 
ence of mind than men. This superiority in conver- 
sational powers in women over the male sex extends 
itself even to the lower classes. In agricultural districts, 
as the clergy well know, the women are much easier to 
get on with than the men, and appear to be much less 
dull, though probably the difference in this respect 
arises not so much from intellectual superiority as from 
the cause already mentioned; and I suppose this be- 
cause women, who are believed to be more secretive 
than men, and who certainly have greater powers of 



GOOD TALKING. 155 

concealing their feelings, are generally less reserved in 
conversation. 

Good talking is a very different thing from great or 
ready talking ; it is the art of perpetually building on the 
conversation of your companion, of amplifying his illus- 
trations, of capping his allusions, of honestly giving 
him his quid pro quo, of evading some of his questions, 
of being, in fact, a constant and adequate comment on 
his remarks where they are just and sensible, and a del- 
icate corrective where they are erroneous ; but, above all. 
of having the capacity to supply his deficiencies by un- 
obtrusively suggesting topics adapted to his tastes and 
abilities — of keeping, in fine, the ball constantly going be- 
tween you. Had Johnson known how to command his 
temper, and been less bigoted and intolerant, had Ed- 
mund Burke been able to adapt himself to his hearers, 
and keep his overmastering enthusiasm subservient to 
his common sense, they would have been the most 
perfect conversationalists in Europe, with the exception 
perhaps of Talleyrand in his best moments among the 
French, and of Ulric von Hutten in his worst moments 
among the Germans. 

The grand defect of modern conversation — and modern 
conversation is something very good — is its utter lack of 
anything like acquired knowledge. A few trite quota- 
tions which, like Porson's Shakespearian parallels to 
Euripides, have been greedily received by a hundred 
hungry wits, one or two threadbare anecdotes which, 
like the last puns on the leg of mutton, are lugged in 
on every possible occasion, make up the capabilities of 
most minds for illustrating the innumerable topics of 
the day. If people will not read and reflect, we can 
never expect to hear good talking, but must continue to 
rest satisfied with the miserable platitudes, vague gener- 



156 GOOD TALKING. 

alities and blatant opinions that disgrace two-thirds of 
modern society, and drive to distraction the very few 
who have been at pains to equip themselves with a more 
or less amount of substantial stock of information. We 
are encouraging every other form of mental culture, and 
giving prizes for every other species of intellectual exer- 
cises ; it seems a great pity we cannot derive some means 
of proposing and adjudging prizes for good talking. 




SOCIAL SILENCE. 




HERE is a silence which is felt to be sociable 
when the silent associates are tried and trusty 
friends. Wherever, in fact, there is implicit confi- 
dence, and an underlying sense of general sym- 
pathy, it is often a relief to be able to hold one's 
peace without any risk of misapprehension, whereas 
with a comparative stranger one puts on company man- 
ners, and has to keep up the shuttlecock of colloquial in- 
anity with all one's battledoor might. Everybody who 
has friends must have felt this, and though — nay, be- 
cause — the feeling is a common one, it may be interesting 
to show by examples how it has been expressed in lit- 
erature. 

Horace Walpole tells a story of two old cronies who, 
sitting together one evening till it was quite dark with- 
out speaking, one called to the other, " Tom ! Tom !" 
"Well," said his friend, "what do you say?" u Oh," 
said the other, " are you there ?" " Ay," said old Tom. . 
"Why, then, don't you say Humph?" demanded the 
first. So that there was but a felt presence ; the silence 
was enjoyable between these twain. The mute com- 
panionship was scarcely the less companionable for be- 
ing mute. Old friends, remarks Walpole in another of 



14 



157 



158 SOCIAL SILENCE. 

his letters, are the great blessings of one's later years — 
half a word conveys one's meaning. He makes the re- 
mark in reference to the loss of his intimate friend Mr. 
Chute, whom he used to see oftener than any one, and 
to whom he had recourse in every difficulty. "And 
him I loved to have here, as our friendship was so en- 
tire, and we knew one another so entirely, that he alone 
was never the least constrained to me. We passed many 
hours together without saying a syllable to each other, 
for we were both above ceremony." 

It is the concluding couplet in the following lines that 
best attests the confiding friendship that existed between 
Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Skene : 

" To thee, perchance, this rambling strain 
Recalls our summer walks again ; 
When doing naught — and, to speak true, 
Not anxious to find aught to do — 
The wild, unbounded hills we ranged, 
While oft our talk its topic changed, 
And desultory, as our way, 
Ranged unconfined from grave to gay ; 
E'en when it flagged, as oft will chance, 
No effort made to break its trance, 
We could right pleasantly pursue 
Our sports in social silence too." 

Wisely and well La Bruyere says that merely to be 
with those we love is enough. To indulge in reverie 
the while ; to talk to them ; not to talk to them ; to 
think about them ; to think on matters indifferent and 
irrelevant to them — but with themselves beside us — all 
goes well on that single condition ; tout est egal. The 
Abbe Barthelemy speaks happily of those happy mo- 
ments between like-minded friends when the very silence 
is a proof of the enjoyment each feels in the mere pres- 



SOCIAL SILENCE. 159 

ence of the other ; for it is a silence productive of neither 
weakness nor disgust. They say nothing, but they are 
together. Rousseau is even rapturous in his eulogies of 
sympathetic silence ; he dilates with enthusiasm on the 
quantity and quality of good things that are said with- 
out ever opening the mouth — on the ardent sentiments 
that are communicated without the frigid medium of 
speech. Fenelon expatiates on the charm of free conir 
m union, satis ceremonie, with a dear friend who don't 
tire you and whom neither do you tire; you see one 
another ; at times one talks ; at others, listens ; at others, 
both keep silence, for both are satisfied with being to- 
gether, even with nothing to say. 

For those who have managed that things shall run 
smoothly over the domestic rug, says the author of 
Orley Farm, there is no happier time of life than the 
long candlelight hours of home and silence. " No spoken 
content or uttered satisfaction is necessary. The fact 
that is felt is enough for peace." This fact is touch- 
ingly exemplified in the story of The Gay worthy s, in the 
instance of stolid Jaazaniah Hoogs and his leal-hearted 
wife Wealthy. We see Jaazaniah in his chair, the three- 
legged chair, tilted up, the man whittling a stick and 
whistling. Wealthy is busy chopping, following her own 
solitary thoughts, but feeling a certain habitual comfort 
in having him at her elbow. Standing up for the poor 
soul, she maintains in one place that his thoughts come 
in his whistling; he could never make such music as 
that out of nothing. " You never heard it, nor nobody 
else, as I have. Why, when we're sitting here all alone 
hell go on so [whistling] that I hold my breath for 
fear o' stopping him. It's like all the Psalms and Revela- 
tions to listen to it. There's something between us then 
that's more than talk." Presently it is beside his death- 



160 SOCIAL SILENCE. 

bed that she sits, in the same expressive silence. " She 
sat by him for hours, sometimes laying her hand softly 
down upon the coverlet, and letting his seek it, as it 
always would ; and the spring breath and music in the 
air spoke gently for them both, and there was something 
between them that was more than talk." 

One thinks of Dr. Johnson in his last illness visited by 
Malone, and proving so unusually silent that the visitor 
rose to leave, believing him to be in pain or incommoded 
by company. " Pray, sir, be seated," Johnson said : " I 
cannot talk, but I like to see you there." Indeed, great 
talker in every sense as the doctor had been in his prime, 
he was never insensible to the value of sympathetic 
silence. During his tour to the Hebrides his companion, 
Boswell, took the liberty one evening to remark to John- 
son that he very often sat quite silent for a long time, 
even when in company with a single friend. " It is true, 
sir,' 1 replied Johnson. "Tom Tyers described me the 
best. He once said to me, ' Sir, you are like a ghost ; 
you never speak till you are spoken to.' " Boswell was 
apparently incapable of seeing anything enjoyable in 
social silence. Not so his every way bigger friend. 

A delightful essayist at the present time, discussing 
the companionship of books, accounts it no forced par- 
adox to say that a man may sometimes be far more 
profitably employed in surveying his bookshelves in 
meditative mood than if he were to pull this or that 
volume down and take to reading it — "Just as two 
friends may hold sweeter converse in perfect silence 
together than if they were talking all the time." 

Henry Mackenzie's Montauban congratulates himself 
on the footing upon which already he stands with his 
new acquaintance, Monsieur de Roubigne: "He does 
not think himself under the necessity of eternally talk- 



SOCIAL SILENCE. 161 

ing to entertain me ; and we sometimes spend a morn- 
ing together, pleased with each other's society, though 
we do not utter a dozen sentences." It is of Julia de 
Roubigne, in the same epistolary novel, that another 
letter-writer declares, after adverting to the sprightliness 
of a Mademoiselle Dorville, " Oh, Beauvaris ! I have 
laid out more soul in sitting five minutes with Julia de 
Roubigne in silence than I should in a year's conversa- 
tion with this little Dorville." 

Elia accounts that to be but an imperfect solitude 
which a man enjo}'s by himself, and applauds the 
sense of the first hermits when they retired into Egyp- 
tian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, " to enjoy one 
another's want of conversation. The Carthusian is 
bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of in- 
communicativeness." On secular occasions, Elia adds, 
what is so pleasant as to be reading a book through a 
long winter evening, with a friend sitting by — say a wife 
— he or she too (if that be probable) reading another 
without interruption or oral communication ! " Can 
there be no sympathy without the gabble of words ? 
.... Give me, Master Zimmermann, a sympathetic 
solitude." 

Lamb's reference to the agreeing spirit of incommuni- 
cativeness cultivated in monastic, retreats may remind 
us of what is told of a celebrated meeting between St. 
Louis, king of France, in disguise, and Egidius of 
Assisi, a rich citizen, " famous for many graces," writes 
Sir James Stephens, " and for not a few miracles." At 
Perugia the two saints met, and long knelt together in 
silent embrace. On the departure of the king, Egidius 
was rebuked by his brethren for his rudeness in not 
having uttered a word to so great a sovereign. " Marvel 
not," he answered, "that we did not speak; a divine 
14 * L 



162 SOCIAL SILENCE. 

light laid bare to each of us the heart of the other. No 
words could have intelligibly expressed that language 
of the soul, or have imparted the same sacred conso- 
lation.' 1 

One of the most popular of French authors comments, 
in his autobiography, on the analogy he professes to 
have observed between the two races of sailors and forest- 
rangers, and tells, for instance, how the mariner or the 
woodman will remain by the side of his best friend, in 
the one case on the ocean, in the other deep in the for- 
est, without exchanging a single word. Bat as the two 
entertain the same train of ideas — as their silence has 
been no more than a long tacit communion with Nature, 
" You will be astonished to find that at the proper mo- 
ment they have but to exchange a word, a gesture or a 
glance, and they have communicated more to each other 
by this word, this gesture or glance of the eye, than 
others could have done in a long discourse." As Scott 
and Skene with their sports, so can these 

" Eight pleasantly pursue 
Their craft in social silence too." 

Mr. Helps' three Friends in Council return home after 
one of their out-door colloquies or peripatetic philoso- 
phizings, " not sorry to be mostly silent " as they go 
along, and glad that their friendship is so assured that 
they can be silent without the slightest danger of offence. 

Mr. Shirley Brooks, in his last and best novel, says : 
" It is a happy time when a man and a woman can be 
long silent together, and love one another the better 
that neither speaks of love. A few years later, and 
silence is perhaps thought to mean either sorrow or 
sulks." And if this reflection relate to fiction, here is 
a sketch from fact which may go with it — a remi- 



SOCIAL SILENCE. 163 

niscence by Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck of her early 
childhood, and of happy hours spent alone with her 
mother, for whom absolute quiet was indispensable dur- 
ing many hours of the day : " She was generally seated 
at her table with her books, her plans of landscape gar- 
dening or ornamental needlework, whilst I was allowed 
to sit in the room, but to be in perfect silence, unless 
when my mother called me to fetch anything or ad- 
dressed to me some little kind word, which seemed not 
so much to break the silence as to make it more com- 
plete and happy by a united flow of hearts." 

The young lover in Mr. Disraeli's love-story, ex- 
pressly so called, apologizes to Henrietta Temple for a 
long term of significant silence with the candid avowal 
that he's afraid he's very stupid. " Because you are si- 
lent?" she asked. " Is not that a sufficient reason?" he 
submits. "Nay, I think not," replies Miss Temple. 
"I think I am rather fond of silent people myself; I 
cannot bear to live with a person who feels compelled to 
talk because he is my companion. The whole day 
passes sometimes without papa and myself exchanging 
fifty words, yet I am very happy ; I do not feel that we 
are dull." 

In the Angel in the House, Frederick sends his mother 
this suggestive sketch of his wedded life : 

For hours " the clock upon the shelf 

Has all the talking to itself; 

But to and fro her needle runs 

Twice while the clock is ticking once ; 

And where a wife is well in reach, 

Not silence separates, but speech ; 

And I, contented, read or smoke, 

And idly think, or idly stroke 

The winking cat, or watch the fire, 

In social peace that does not tire." 



RESERVED PEOPLE. 




HEN, enveloped in a cloud, folded up by the ten- 
der care of his goddess-mother, that pious hero 
iEneas, hidden from his . friends, enjoyed the 
privilege of watching all their proceedings, he 
was tasting the pleasures of reserved character ; 
they standing in the light to him, and he in the dark to 
them. He knew all that they were about, and they knew 
nothing about him. Nay, they did not even know that 
they knew nothing; for, though they were aware that 
their eyes did not behold him, they were not aware that 
he was near enough to them in the relations of space 
to admit of the possibility of his being seen. He was 
experiencing the delight without the danger of a reser- 
vation, for he was not suspected of withholding himself. 
Had he been suspected — had there entered into the mind 
of any one of that troop of friends the dimmest, re- 
motest, faintest notion of the cloud that concealed him 
— what efforts would have been made to rend it! what 
cries, what clamors, what supplications to the goddess 
to unveil him before the appointed time! for human 
nature has a detestation of concealment— a detestation 
which proceeds from many causes. There is curiosity, 
in itself a strong impulse ; there is pride, and there 
is suspicion — curiosity longing to peep behind the 

164 



RESERVED PEOPLE. 165 

curtain, pride resenting the absence of confidence, and 
suspicion suggesting that where the lock is so rigidly- 
secured there must be some blue chamber with its un- 
pleasant contents behind it. The reserved man, there- 
fore, is an object of dislike and distrust, but he is also a 
subject of interest. He repels confidence, but he excites 
attention, and he has the whole enjoyment of his own 
individuality. He rejoices in the superiority of an un- 
imparted knowledge. Is it not agreeable from a high 
window to survey the movements of a crowd below, 
dancing, laughing, leaping, fighting, crying, kissing— to 
analyze their agitations, to smile at their disturbances, 
to be yourself secure, and still a looker-on who is not 
looked at — to be audience to a drama, and to criticise 
the actors, who cannot criticise you ? 

This is the privilege of the reserved man. He con- 
ceals his emotions, he buries his feelings, he masks his 
passions. He controls his features ; every muscle is un- 
der his command ; there is no such thing with him as 
a spontaneous movement. He revels in a continual vic- 
tory. He baffles curiosity, he defeats expectation, he 
destroys hope. He wears his shroud before he is in his 
tomb. The inquisitive crowd will pluck at it, but will 
draw back shivering when they feel how cold it is. They 
wonder, they fear, they admire ; and they admire with 
good reason. The power of concealment is in itself 
worthy of admiration ; the man who wears so strong an 
armor must needs be a strong man, and it is the con- 
sciousness of a valuable possession that suggests the 
necessity for a defence. The habit of reserve has most 
often its origin in a disbelief in sympathy, in the exist- 
ence of some qualities or some emotions with which 
those who are classed as fellow-creatures are not likely 
to have any fellow feelings. There is in such characters. 



166 RESERVED PEOPLE. 

it may be, a sensibility fine and true that sinks itself 
deep, too delicate to mix with vulgar streams. If you 
would taste the purity of the water, you must dig labor- 
iously for it. There is, it may be, a passionate power 
fervent and concentrated, too full to dribble out, too 
strong to dissipate itself in petty phrases and agreeable 
expressions of sentiment, or perhaps an intelligence high 
and extended to which views are granted infinitely be- 
yond the horizon of the general eye. 

Men have been distinguished from beasts, say the 
loquacious proudly, by the gift of speech. True, but 
have they not also been distinguished by the gift of 
silence? They are not constrained to purr or to wag 
their tails when they are pleased, or to howl and cater- 
waul when they are in extremities ; they are allowed to 
reserve their emotions. The human countenance — the 
most delicate indicator of feeling, the dial that may with 
its record fix the shadow of every flitting passion — can 
silence its indications at will and become a mere blank. 
A decent gravity of expression may cover anger ; tender- 
ness may hide itself securely behind the wall of com- 
pressed lips ; exultation may bury itself under downcast 
eyelids ; a movement of joy may shelter itself beneath 
the wrinkles of the brow ; or the whole features in com- 
bination may be ordered by the commanding officer to 
stand at ease in a position of total repose while the 
thoughts are full of war and tumult. No other creature 
but man has this power; it is a high privilege which 
must be used by all men more or less. Those who use 
it the less are recognized as the frank and open; those 
who use it the more, as the reserved and close. 

The two characters are sometimes combined, and the 
skillful diplomatist is he who maintains his reserve 
under a free liberal semblance — whose smile is ready, 



RESERVED PEOPLE. 167 

whose hand is extended, whose words flow easity, but 
whose mind is locked up. u Right humanitie," says the 
wise Lord Burleigh in a letter to his son, "takes such 
deep root in the minds of the multitude, as they are 
easilier gained by unprofitable curtesies than by churlish 
benefits." 

Now, the unprofitable courtesy is not incompatible 
with reserve, although the disposition of the reserved 
man will frequently incline him to the practice of its 
opposite. The very summit of exterior politeness may 
be reached without any revelation from within ; and the 
Frenchman who in the bitterness of impending suffoca- 
tion could not forget the polite phrase, and gasped out to 
his host while he struggled with his mortal foe, " Sir, I 
have the honor to have a bone in vay throat," may have 
been as reserved in character as any Englishman. Re- 
serve, indeed, is rather an aristocratic characteristic. 
And it is the ill-bred, coarse-mannered man who is the 
most often garrulously given, who is glib and oily, who 
noises his sentiments and enters into the details of his 
domestic life, of his small affections and of his personal 
history as soon as he makes your acquaintance. Such a 
man will talk to you of his diseases and of his remedies, 
of his troubles with his servants and of his quarrels with 
his wife, with unlimited and undesired freedom if he do 
but meet you in a railroad carriage. Such a man is too 
full of himself ever to doubt the full sympathy of his 
hearer. 

It is not, however, with the mere gentlemanly civilit} 
that friendship can be satisfied ; politeness belongs to 
the early stages of acquaintance, and the courtesies that 
friendship asks are of a different kind. Friendship will 
ask for a soothing, kindly tenderness, and when trouble 
comes will claim some demonstration of gentle charity, 



168 RESERVED PEOPLE. 

some drops of sacred pity; but the reserved man will 
not give them. Much else he may give, but not that, 
and if you attempt in such a sort to draw upon his sym- 
pathies, your bill will be dishonored. 

His atmosphere is incapable of radiation; the heats 
of emotion may travel to his heart, but they will not 
flow back again ; they will not pass out either in words 
or looks. As lamps in sepulchres they remain unseen, 
yet not, as those, useless. They will light the way to the 
act of sacrifice and self-denial ; for the same man who is 
so much a miser in expression will be prodigal in action. 
Let there be a definite, tangible good to give, and he will 
give it. Devotion of time, of strength, of money, of 
thought — the sacrifice of his own pleasure, of his own 
comfort, his own desire — the secret sacrifice, — these 
things may come from him in good measure, pressed 
down and shaken together and running over; he will 
shrink from no service but that of admitting an acknow- 
ledgment of his service. He is a friend in ambush. 

In the moment of danger and anguish, when you are 
about to be cut down, he starts from his hiding-place to 
your rescue. Your gratitude overflows ; you fling your- 
self before him ; you lay at his feet the rich abundance 
of your love, to have it kicked away. He will not stoop 
to pick it up ; his glance is averted and he turns his 
back upon you, disappearing again among those mists 
in which it is his pleasure to dwell, though for a mo- 
ment he emerged from them and stood in that clear 
light of affection which made him look so radiant. 

There are certain crystals which contain within them 
a hidden fire. Cold and silent for long, long centuries 
they may remain, but if you subject them to the action 
of heat they will gleam with a quick light, and every 
particle will show like a glow-worm in the night. The 



RESERVED PEOPLE. 169 

fire within them is only elicited at a raised temperature; 
they must be warmed into life. So is it with some hearts ; 
their vitality is only to be recognized under the influence 
of a sudden glow — to be recognized, only so, at least, by 
the general eye ; but to the skilled and delicate observer 
the symptoms of that vitality are to be detected even in 
their normal condition. The philosopher understands 
the secret sign, and through the subtle structure he dis- 
cerns the mystery of that complex nature ; he discerns 
it with a deep and loving wonder. It is remarkable 
how the impulsive nature will cling to the controlled, 
how the eager and flowing will do homage to the supe- 
riority of a compressed calm. 

Shakespeare's Horatio is an essentially reserved man, 
cool and constant in exterior — a man of few words. 
Hamlet, impulsive, eager, swayed by contending pas- 
sions, amazed with doubts and thoughts beyond the 
reaches of our souls, turns to him with trust, feels a 
security in his repose, a dependence on his quiet judg- 
ment. 

But the most eloquent, ardent and imaginative of 
French writers has chosen a calm Englishman for the 
hero of her romance. While Lord Nevil was sailing 
away in serene dignity Corinne was beating her head 
against a stone. The impulsive nature is undoubtedly 
the more popular, but the reserved commands a higher 
and a deeper love. The impulsive, ardent in profession, 
eager in expression, in action can do no more than keep 
pace with promise, and more commonly falls below it ; 
while the reserved and self-contained, making no promise, 
holding out no hope, is ever in advance of his own word, 
and the smallest act of kindness comes from him like a 
deed of grace. 

The cold and silent seem true by refraining from 

15 



170 RESERVED PEOPLE. 

speech; the hot and forward seem fickle by speaking 
too much, for it is certain that no human being is alto- 
gether constant and consistent ; only, as long as he 
suppresses his opinions and feelings the changes they 
undergo are not found out, while those who are given to 
much speaking furnish the record of their own fluctu- 
ations, and are judged or misjudged accordingly, being 
often accused of insincerity where they should be the 
rather praised for their candor in admitting the error of 
a preconceived opinion, too great a haste in publication 
being the only fault of which they are really guilty. 

The danger of the ready speaker lies in an expendi- 
ture of force. He runs the risk of being satisfied with 
the good word, to the neglect of the good deed ; while the 
reserved man runs the risk of totally extinguishing the 
fire that he seeks to hide ; for affection at least will lan- 
guish to death for want of expression, and life of all 
kinds will lose itself in darkness. 

If a nature be nobly stamped, is it not a pity to call 
in art to alter its face? Let vice have recourse to the 
screen, let the deformed visage be thickly covered, but 
let Virtue show us something of the fairness of her as- 
pect, and let the veil she wears be delicate, that we may 
discern through it the sweetness of her countenance. 

Reserve is often mistaken for shyness, and sometimes 
for pride; with shyness it has in truth no kindred. 
Shyness is a timidity, an embarrassment, in the presence 
of others, which proceeds rather from the physical con- 
dition of the nerves than from any peculiar mental qual- 
ity. Reserve is a mental effort. A baby may be shy, 
but a baby cannot be reserved. Reserve is steadfast and 
not troubled, and, except where the emotions are called 
into play, does not affect the flow of social intercourse. 
With the reserved man, so long as you remain in the 



RESERVED PEOPLE. 171 

regions of taste and fancy, you may walk pleasantly 
through sunny paths and meadows, and pull sweet 
flowers as you go. It is only when you would enter into 
the avenues of feeling that you run against the high 
closed gate. 

The height and depth of the love cherished toward 
the reserved have been spoken of. It is so deep, because 
we admire the more reverentially whatever is beyond 
the extent of our preception. "Heard melodies are 
sweet, but those unheard are sweeter yet." And there 
is "the unknown joy that knowing kills." Is not the 
fascination of the difficult and the dark entrancing in 
its kind ? See how navigators are pressing on constantly 
to the North Pole at the risk of being ice-bound, wrecked 
and miserably starved, merely because there is some- 
thing to be discovered. 

The affection is so high, so exalted, because it is free 
from the taint of self-love, and does not venture to ask 
for a return, content with the happiness of esteeming 
a true excellence and of giving without expecting to 
receive. 

The impulsive man trusts his friend too much ; the 
reserved man trusts only himself. The impulsive may 
be despised, but cannot be hated. The reserved man 
may be hated, but cannot be despised. He occupies 
the fortress, he holds the strong, impregnable position. 
He is behind the walls and our shots whiz past him. 
He reveals no front to the foe. He will tire out the be- 
sieger. Only let him take care that while he makes his 
lines of defence against the enemy so strong he does not 
also close the way to friendly supplies. All virtues 
may be carried into an excess which converts them into 
faults, and reserve — which is, after all, control — may pass 
into a repelling stoicism. 



172 RESERVED PEOPLE. 

If a man would shine as a statesman or a diplomatist, 
as a barrister or a military man, he must practice re- 
serve in all his dealings with the public. This is essen- 
tial to success. But there is something more valuable 
than even a great name. The friendship of a true friend 
is worth it all, and is seldom gained by reserve. It is 
necessary to friendship that men should be mutually 
well disposed to give and take. It is necessary to its ex- 
istence that a man should feel that while he gives con- 
fidence he also receives it. 

The reserve that stands in the way of making friends 
is hateful. It prevents a man from ever getting outside 
of himself. He may have admirers if he is clever, and 
toadies if he is powerful and rich. He may succeed 
wonderfully well in his ambition, but he will live and 
die without friends. To be able to feel and to express 
sympathy is a faculty which seldom accompanies reserve. 
Yet it is the food which nourishes friendship. It is im- 
possible to go on for ever taking it upon trust, without 
at least some occasional indications of its existence ex- 
pressed by word and deed. We cannot hope to move 
others to tears unless we too weep. The dull, cold, im- 
passive manner, suggestive of like faculties of heart, can 
never kindle a fire in others. We must weep with those 
that weep, and laugh with those that rejoice, if we would 
brighten with our sympathy the chequered life of those 
among whom we live. 



SOCIAL SALAMANDERS AND 
SENSITIVE PLANTS. 




?EW of the minor elements of character make more 
difference in men's comfort and success in life 
than differences in the thickness of their skins. 
In describing that general impression of our 
neighbor which determines in our mind what 
sort of man he is, a prominent place is always assigned 
to this quality. Nor could it be otherwise, for it makes 
itself felt at every moment. It is one of the elements 
which in the animal world establish marked distinc- 
tions between one creature and another. It establishes, 
for instance, a sort of symbolic difference between the 
donkey and the horse ; and a whole world of creatures, 
from the rhinoceros to the pig, are able to sympathize 
with each other on the broad ground that they are all 
pachyderms. In the human race skins of what shop- 
keepers would describe as a medium quality are, of 
course, the commonest; but in our own day and among 
the educated part of society abnormal thinness is far 
more common than abnormal thickness, and it is also 
more easily observed. A man wdth a very thick skin 
is not usually conscious of his peculiarity, and he often 
takes a long time to find out its existence in others. 

15* 173 



174 SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE PLANTS. 

The human pachyderm is, in some respects, a fortunate 
animal, especially if he has the good sense to bear his 
honors meekly and not to suppose, as he is sometimes 
inclined to do, that he is of necessity the superior of 
those who are less gifted by Nature. The distinction be- 
tween thick skins and thin ones lies in the temperament. 
A thick-skinned man is one in whom it is difficult to 
excite feeling of any sort. A thin-skinned is sensitive 
all over and on every occasion. To some extent the 
difference is one of Nature's making, but the artificial 
element in it is much larger than people usually suppose. 
The question how far men can harden their skins, and 
to what extent it is desirable to do so, is by no means 
devoid of interest. We often hear and read of uncon- 
trollable feelings, just as .people talk loosely about un- 
controllable impulses ; and no doubt at a given moment 
it is impossible to like or dislike, to suffer or to be in- 
different, by rule and on principle. If a broader view 
is taken, this is far from being the case. If people will 
only set themselves to try systematically, there is hardly 
any limit to the degree of mental tanning which they 
may effect. If stoicism were a really admirable frame 
of mind, and a possession deliberately desired by any 
particular person, it is one which can always be at- 
tained by judicious discipline. A man careful to ex- 
aggerate nothing, and to proceed by gradual advances, 
might, in fewer years than he would in the first instance 
be inclined to suppose, destroy or subdue his original 
temperament, and make himself as hard as if his hard- 
ness were a gift of Nature and not an acquisition. The 
steps in the process are neither many nor difficult. 

To attempt at too early a stage to repress the expres- 
sion of very strong feelings might only irritate, and so 
increase them. The expression of strong feeling is, how- 



SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE PLANTS. 175 

ever, a thing to which few people have frequent occasion 
to give way. It is not every day that a man is very 
angry, or very much in love, or afflicted with a very 
violent toothache; and by assiduous practice amongst 
the smaller events of life callousness as to the greater 
ones may gradual^ be superinduced. The habit of 
analysis and self-examination has also a great indura- 
tive effect. If a young woman wished to make herself, 
impervious to all feelings, she might, whilst cultivating 
impassiveness on a gradually ascending scale, betake her- 
self to the study of the works of the minute school of 
female novelists. In this way she might gradually get 
together a sort of hortus siccus containing dried speci- 
mens of every human emotion in their various combina- 
tions and permutations. By cultivating a quasi scientific, 
or rather professional, interest in feeling, it is possible to 
place one's self, as it were, in a sphere separate from and 
exterior to it, as physicians and lawyers do with refer- 
ence to the subject-matter of their respective professions. 
An enthusiast who wrote to the papers some time ago 
about the merits of pounded chalk as a specific for burns 
declared that he laid a red-hot poker across two of his 
fingers to see whether the one treated with chalk would 
beat the one handed over to the doctors. If the same 
course be taken with feeling, with sufficient perseverance 
and intelligence an analogous result may be expected. 
People may live to regard the play of their own and 
their neighbor's sentiments with mere artistic curiosity ; 
and this greatly blunts their edge, and so diminishes the 
sensitiveness of the person. There are means by which 
this process may be rendered quicker and more effective. 
If a person can once succeed in connecting certain feel- 
ings with ridiculous associations, and in persuading him- 
self to entertain a bona fide contempt for them, he may 



176 SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE PLANTS. 

consider that he has, for practical purposes, solved the 
question of providing himself with a thick skin. Con- 
tempt, it is said, will pierce the shell of the tortoise, but 
to excite any emotion in a man who has drilled himself 
into habitually feeling genuine contempt for emotions of 
that class is next to impossible. The question of means 
is, of course, altogether collateral to the question whether 
it is wise to emplo}^ them, and that depends on the ad- 
vantages of thickness of skin. When given by Nature, 
either at once or gradually, it is in certain ways a con- 
siderable advantage, but it hardly ever deserves to be 
viewed as one when it is intentionally cultivated. Its 
advantage is that it is one form of strength. It makes 
its possessor less indisposed than other people to do what 
is generally considered disagreeable ; but when it is pro- 
duced by merely lowering the general standard of vitality 
and sensibility, it is a form not of strength, but of weak- 
ness, for it arises not from disregard to unpleasant con- 
sequences, but from disregard to consequences of every 
kind — from general indifference to the pursuits of life. 
The union of bluntness of sensation with great energy 
of character is by no means a common one. The rule 
is the other way. Almost every man who distinguishes 
himself greatly in any of the active walks of life is, as 
a rule, a sensitive man. This is especially the case in 
callings which require artistic qualities. It is hardly 
possible, for instance, for a thick-skinned man to be a 
good speaker. People who are really unaccustomed to 
public speaking usually suppose that to be nervous is a 
great evil, and that to be perfectly free from the feeling — 
to have, as the phrase is, no nerves at all — is an immense 
advantage. It is certainly possible to have too much, 
but of the two, the worse fault is to have too little ; and 
it is by no means clear that amongst men who speak 



SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE PLANTS. 177 

often enough to get over the strangeness of the feeling, 
and to become accustomed to the sound of their own 
voices, it is not the more common fault. A man who 
is in no degree impressed by the fact that a large num- 
ber of people are listening to what he says has Jess 
chance than his neighbor of impressing them by what 
he says. 

To be in sympathy with his audience, to see what 
topics they will and will not like, and to know when 
and how to pursue particular subjects, are the first 
qualifications of an effective speaker, whatever may be 
the sphere in which his eloquence may be used ; and 
this implies that the speaker must be in some ways a 
sensitive man — at all events, it implies that he ought 
not to be wanting in sensitiveness. 

Though, as a rule, energy runs through the whole 
character, and communicates itself to the feelings which 
lie near the surface as well as to other parts of a man's 
nature, exceptions sometimes occur. A very vigorous 
man may have blunt feelings. He may have a great 
appetite for what there is to be had in the world, and 
yet not care much if he loses or has to go without it. 
This, however, is not a- common form of character, and 
when it does occur is probably produced by some pe- 
culiar twist in the circumstances of the possessor's life 
or education. Suppose, for instance that a very vigors 
ous man has, for some cause or other, been snubbed, 
thwarted and thrown aside for a considerable time — that 
he has had to submit to disappointments and mortifica- 
tions, and has seen inferiors put over his head. Suppose, 
further, that he has had the good sense not to be dis- 
satisfied with this, but to take it quietly as the course 
of things which under all the circumstances of life was 

naturally to be expected ; and suppose, above all, that} 

M 



178 SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE PLANTS. 

he is considerate as well as energetic, and is given to 
take the measure of what falls in his way without noise 
and exaggeration. The probability is that he will find 
that things neither hurt so much nor please so much as 
the language in common use about them would imply, 
and that, so long as the internal fire which drives a man 
on to be doing something in the world has some fuel to 
burn, it does not so much matter what it is. Such a 
frame of mind and such experience would produce a 
good kind of thick skin — that thickness of skin that 
arises from exercise, and not from natural sluggishness 
and stupidity. It is, however, a rare frame of mind, 
for it implies the possession of very dissimilar if not 
inconsistent qualities — energy and reflectiveness, a turn 
for active life and a turn for self-examination, the gifts 
which take a man out into the world and those which 
throw him back on himself. The nature of the sensi- 
tive habit of mind receives much illustration from con- 
sidering the way in which it shows itself in different 
classes. 

Its natural connection with energy of character is 
shown by the degree in which it exists ^among the poor 
and uneducated. Some of the most sensitive people 
in the world are to be found amongst the roughest, 
noisiest and least educated part of the community — the 
classes which would be picked out as specimens of 
rough vigor. 

People who possess fine feelings are chiefly remark- 
able for the ease with which they take offence ; it being 
indeed impossible, even for the most wary of their as- 
sociates, to avoid giving umbrage in some shape, and 
generally when least intending it and most innocently 
minded. The act of wisdom most impossible to be per- 
formed by these self-torturers is the philosophic accept- 



SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE PLANTS. 179 

ance of life as it is and of things as they fall naturally 
to their share. People with fine feelings are seldom able 
to take a joke, and you will hear them relating, with an 
injured accent and as a serious accusation, the meanest 
bit of nonsense you fling off at random, with no more 
intention of wounding them than had the merchant the 
intention of putting out the efreet's eye when he flung 
his date-stones in the desert. As you cannot deny what 
you have said, they have the whip-hand of you for the 
moment ; and all you can hope for is that the friend to 
whom they detail their grievance will see through them 
and it, and understand the joke if they cannot. Then 
there are fine feelings which express themselves in ex- 
ceeding irritation at moral and intellectual differences 
of opinion — fine feelings bound up in questions of faith 
and soundness of doctrine, having taken certain moral 
and theological views under their especial patronage, 
and holding all diversity of judgment therefrom a per- 
sonal offence. The people thus afflicted are exceedingly 
uncomfortable folks to deal with, and manage to make 
every one else uncomfortable too. You hurt their feel- 
ings so continually and so unconsciously that you 
might as well be living in a region of steel -traps and 
spring-guns, and set to walk blindfold among pitfalls 
and water-holes. You fling your date-stone here too, 
quite carelessly and thinking no evil, and up starts the 
efreet who swears you have injured him intentionally ; 
you express an opinion without attaching any particular 
importance to it, but you hurt the fine feelings which 
oppose it, and unless you wish to have a quarrel you 
must retract or apologize. As the worst temper always 
carries the day, and as fine feelings are only bad tempers 
under another name, you very probably do apologize, 
and so the matter ends. Other people show their fine- 



180 N SALAMANDERS AND SENSITIVE PLANTS. 

ness of feeling by their impatience of pain, and the 
tremendous grievance they think it that they should 
suffer as others— they say, so much more than others. 
These are the people who are great on the theory of 
nervous differences, and who maintain that their coward- 
ice and impatience of pain mean an organization like 
an seolian harp for sensibility. The oddest part of the 
business is the sublime contempt these sensitives have 
for other persons' patience and endurance, and how much 
more refined and touching they think their own puerile 
sensibility. But this is a characteristic of humanity all 
through ; the masquerading of evil under the name of 
good being one of the saddest facts of an imperfect 
nature and a confused system of morals. If all things 
showed their faces without disguise, and if spades were 
always called spades and not softened down to " agricul- 
tural implements," we should have fine feelings placed 
in a different category from that in which they stand at 
this moment, and the world would be the richer by just 
so much addition of truth. 




TACT. 




HERE is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a 
time to speak and a time to keep silence. 

In quoting these words of the Preacher, we 
have no desire to preach or to moralize upon un- 
disputed truths. Our object is very different. 
We wish to speak of tact, which may be said to be the 
knowledge when and how to speak and to act; and 
hence the words of the Preacher seem to form an apt in- 
troduction to the remarks we propose to make. 

Gifted as we are with powers of mind and body, of 
thought, speech and action, living amongst human be- 
ings possessing like faculties and passions, we find our- 
selves encompassed by difficulties out of which we can- 
not escape unless we practically acknowledge that to 
everything there is a season. 

The word tact is really a French word, but by use and 
custom it has become naturalized, and nowhere can we 
find any other word — certainly none in the English lan- 
guage — to express its meaning. 

The French tact is, in its first sense, "le sens du 
toucher ;" but it has also a further and figurative mean- 
ing — " le jugenlent fin et delicat," and a person who has 
tact is said " d'avoir le jugement fin et subtil." 

16 181 



182 TACT. 

It is not discretion, for that is the art of directing one's 
self; nor experience, which is knowledge gained by prac- 
tice; but it is something distinct from these and infi- 
nitely more delicate. Discretion and experience may be 
acquired, but tact is innate — may almost be called a 
natural instinct, an intuitive guide, which not all but 
only a few possess. " L'hornme qui joint a l'experience. 
le tact des convenances est aussi rare qu'il est utile.'' 
Rare indeed ! for how frequently do we find men of ge- 
nius, of cultivated intellect, failing in the game of life be- 
cause they have not this invaluable gift ! For want of 
it even wise and kind men go blundering on, saying 
and doing the most mat apropos things, marring their in- 
fluence and wounding where they least desire to wound. 
Beauty, wit and talent acquire a tenfold greater influ- 
ence when combined with tact. A beautiful woman 
without tact is closely allied to the " fair woman with- 
out discretion," and the man of wit and humor who 
knows not when to exercise his talents converts himself 
and his jests into a nuisance. 

Tact has special reference to the proprieties of life — to 
what is seasonable and fit. This is well expressed in 
the French saying which we have quoted : " Le tact des 
convenances." It is the salt which seasons other great 
and good gifts that we value so highly. It adds a grace 
to the smallest acts, and embellishes mediocrity more 
than anything else, giving it a power and a place which 
it would otherwise fail to attain. 

There have always been men of very moderate ability, 
who have been able to take and maintain a prominent 
position in the political world for the simple reason that 
they have tact, which prevents their making mistakes, 
enables them to reconcile and remove opposition, and to 
take advantage of favorable circumstances as thev arise. 



TACT. 183 

We have at this moment before our minds a very- 
striking illustration of this in a statesman who, with a 
moderate amount of talent, has attained to considerable 
eminence through his consummate tact. It may have 
been owing to his early and intimate acquaintance with 
French men and women, who certainly excel us in this 
respect; or, more likely still, that he inherited it from 
his parents, who also were remarkable for it — his father 
a man of great reputation in the diplomatic world, and 
his mother conspicuous for the way in which she could 
gather together men of every shade of opinion without 
offending any, because she was so encompassed with an 
atmosphere of tact that her very presence softened an- 
imosities and promoted good-humor, even making a 
" sunshine in a shady place." 

Tact is like the soft answer that turneth away wrath. 
It mollifies, it soothes, it reconciles ; it teaches men how 
to give and take. As the expert angler knows when to 
run out his line and to play with his fish, so the man of 
tact knows by a kind of instinct all the turns and twists 
of those among whom he lives, and can wait till the con- 
venient season comes before he speaks or acts. Herein 
lies the secret of his success in life. He wastes neither 
words nor time in needless discussions, but, like the 
prudent husbandman, keeps his store ready against the 
time of need. 

We have often heard it said by those who affect to 
despise it that tact is a kind of hypocrisy. But this is 
a great mistake. There is no affinity between the two. 
There is no more want of truth in tact than there was 
in him who desired to be " all things to all men.". Hy- 
pocrisy is pretending to be what we are not. What re- 
lation, then, can it have to that which is the knowledge 
when and what to say and do ? We are not bound to 



184 TACT. 

blurt out all we think and know at the bidding of any- 
fool that asks a question. We are not living in such a 
palace of truth that we are bound to expose all the 
workings of our minds to the public gaze; nor are we 
bound to take upon ourselves the odious office of men- 
tor to our friends and acquaintance, and show our ap- 
proval or disapproval of things that are happening 
around us. But it will be found that they who would 
depreciate tact are either persons of very brusque man- 
ners or exaggerated specimens of that characteristic 
which is peculiar to some men and "women. We say 
" exaggerated specimens," because we refer to an inten- 
sity of that blunt honestly upon which many pride them- 
selves ; and one can well imagine that they who consider 
it to be a duty to say what comes into their minds, irre- 
spective of time, and place, and society, must be very 
intolerant of that tender consideration and instinctive 
though tfulness for others which is comprised in that one 
most expressive word — tact. The greatest harm we would 
wish them is, that they may experience its blessing, and 
then acknowledge its value. Then will they, we would 
fain hope, inflict less pain upon their friends, whom they 
so continually "nay alive." 

It was cleverly and amusingly said of a mother and 
daughter, who are apt illustrations of the two qualities 
of mind now under discussion, that the mother was con- 
tinually going about to put plasters on the wounds which 
her daughter made — the mother always saying and do- 
ing the right thing, and putting the world into good- 
humor with itself; the daughter "frumping " everybody, 
and, " honest as the day," always saying some unpalata- 
ble truth for which there was no necessity. 

Wounds indeed they are which these anti-tact people 



TACT. 185 

inflict, and very deep wounds too. If there is a sore 
point, a tender subject, a raw anywhere, it is unfail- 
ingly hit; not maliciously nor intentionally, but be- 
cause they lack that invisible rein to guide and control 
them. 

How often have we seen some poor victim almost viv- 
isected during a morning call, when question after 
question is indiscreetly asked in the most blind and per- 
tinacious manner, utterly regardless of the torture that 
is being inflicted ! 

How often have we seen the " cat let out of the bag," 
and heard the secret told or been let behind the scenes 
by some unfortunately communicative person who is 
sure to say what ought not to be said ! There is an 
amusing story told of a lady who was complimented 
upon a speech which her- husband had made at some 
public meeting where he was anxious, for sufficient rea- 
sons, to create a sensation. Her friend, seeing how much 
pleasure he gave, continued speaking upon the subject, 
especially commenting upon a particular line of argu- 
ment which he considered to be well and conclusively 
put. " Ah !" she said, " I am very glad you were struck 
by that; for, dear fellow ! he took so much pains with 
that passage." 

An impatient temper which cannot brook delays, but 
insists upon a hearing and a reply, regardless of the 
"convenient season," is utterty subversive of all tact, 
and is a direct rebellion against its very first principles. 
Nor is this all. In the daily intercourse of life we find 
ourselves constrained to keep some people at a distance, 
for fear of what they may say or do. We dare not 
expose our inmost feelings and tenderest memories to 
their rough and impertinent handling. The absence of 
tact also blunts men's perceptions. They cannot appro- 

16* 



186 TACT. 

ciate those delicate shades of character which go far to 
make a man great. 

In society we find a just tribute paid to it in the wel- 
come that is invariably given to the man who possesses 
this gift. He says the right thing at the right time and 
in the right place. He puts every one at his ease. There 
is none of that " sitting upon thorns " as to what he may 
say or do. He never outstays his welcome ; never ob- 
trudes himself where he is not wanted ; is never gauche ; 
and when he takes his leave we are conscious that some- 
thing pleasant has gone from us. 

Generally speaking, the selfish, the vain, the conceited 
have no tact, for it involves a certain amount of the 
spirit of self-sacrifice ; neither does it take up its abode 
by the side of ambition or self-will ; nor does it asso- 
ciate with irreverence or a dictatorial and domineering 
temper. 

It prefers the will of others to its own; with gentle- 
ness it abstains from wounding another's feelings, and 
treats adverse opinions with respect, having an especial 
reverence for the aged and infirm or those who have a 
natural claim upon its dutiful consideration. It cannot 
exist where there is not some self-discipline and self- 
control, for its very essence lies in quiet- forge tfulness of 
self and tender consideration for others. 

It is a beautiful and touching sight to see the young 
acting upon its impulses. Youth is especially the age 
of thoughtlessness, the present absorbing every other 
interest; bat when this gives place to a tender and 
almost sensitive regard for the feelings and wants of 
others, and the young put a constraint upon themselves 
that they may not say or do what can displease, it is a 
sight which is as beautiful as it is rare. 

It has often occurred to us as doubtful whether it 



TACT. 187 

generally goes hand in hand with great intellectual 
vigor. We do not say that it is so ; we merely throw 
it out as a suggestion, as a possibility. But if it be 
so, it accounts for the way in which so many of our 
greatest men have it not; why the French are so con- 
spicuous for it, for, as a nation, they are not such 
deep thinkers as either the Germans or the English, 
amongst whom it is more rarety found. It certainly 
exists among the poor, and among the country poor, 
who are more simple in their tastes. It seems to us to 
be one of those gifts by which the balance of good and 
evil is equalized in the world. Precious gift! We be- 
lieve it to be one of the rarest and greatest gifts we can 
possess, which will enable us, if we fortunately possess 
it, to do much good in our generation. 




THE TALENT OF LOOKING LIKE 
A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 




p> MONG the more recondite talents which grow out 
of an artificial state of society and the necessity 
? of self-protection, perhaps the most rare, yet the 
most valuable — the most subtle and unpalatable, 
yet that which a sensitive man must prize above 
rubies and pearls when needed— is the talent of looking 
like a fool with propriety. To look like a fool is not 
naturally becoming ; indeed, it might be classed as one 
of those things which are essentially unbecoming both 
in man and in beast. He is fort an ate. who never in his 
life, with or without fault of his own, has felt like a fool. 
But how a man looks when he feels so is probably the 
most penetrating test of what he is made of. A man, 
we are told, had rather be thought a knave than a fool, 
and perhaps this may be true of the average of men ; 
but if it is true, it measures the difficulty of looking like 
a fool with such decency as the thing admits of when 
thrust upon one. Accidents are from time to time hap- 
pening to different persons in society, .which fall upon 
them as unawares as a flower-pot falling from the third 
story upon the head of the unwitting passenger — acci- 
dents which seem as if especially designed to lay bare 

188 



A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 189 

their whole character, to try their temper and training 
and to test whatever knowledge and experience of the 
world they may possess. 

Looking at social disadvantages in the broadest pos- 
sible view, it is interesting to consider what, in the ab- 
stract, is the general bearing we prefer to see in those 
who are either born to some permanent physical defect 
— such as lameness or deformity of any kind — or in- 
volved in a cloud by family circumstances over which 
they have or have not any control, or who are overtaken 
by some of the thousand-and-one ridiculous accidents 
which fly about the world like rockets. How do most 
people like a humpback to carry his hump, or a lame 
girl to bear her lameness? How should a man behave 
before the world whose wife has run away, or whose 
parents or children or cousins have made fools of them- 
selves ? Or again, consider your sudden emergencies : 
how should any one look and act who has suddenly sat 
down before a large assembly on an imaginary chair, or 
spilt a glass of champagne over the dress of the lady 
of the house, or whose private and confidential com- 
munications become public by some absurd and incom- 
prehensible accident, or who suddenly finds himself 
exposed to absolute misrepresentations or downright 
lies, or whose intimate friends suddenly turn their backs 
upon him without any assignable reason? Of course 
there is a great difference between all these cases, yet 
they all have a similar element of discomfort in com- 
mon, which tends to throw both observers and observed 
out of their accustomed grooves. Perhaps the most use- 
ful feeling to have in such cases is to be so profoundly 
imbued with one's own insignificance — and, indeed, with 
the comparative insignificance, except to a very few, of 
any one person, however great, in the world — as not to 



190 A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 

be overwhelmed by small mischances. With such an 
opiate it is easier to reduce one's action into approxi- 
mate proportion to the real substantive selfishness and 
indifference of all classes for but class interests, and 
therefore for all individual mishaps. "Mr. So-and-So 
has broken his leg." " How very sad ! but you know 
people do break their legs." " He will be lame for life." 
"Poor man! how very unfortunate! I suppose he will 
wear a wooden leg." And so on. The sun shines as 
brightly, the birds sing as sweetly over the broken leg 
or the murdered traveler's bones as over the budding 
rose or the gentle violet. And the lesson which Nature 
teaches of a sweet and sunny indifference is perhaps the 
highest ideal to which man, smarting under his own ills, 
can aspire. But then the indifference must be sweet and 
sunny if it is to be pleasing. It must not be impudent 
and callous, or haughty and hobbledehoyish and ill-bred, 
or vain and grotesque and conceited, adding ridicule to 
ridicule. Of course it is very easy for any one to pretend 
to say what people's conduct under such-and-such circum- 
stances ought or ought not to be. Many a poor wretch 
could write a very pathetic essay on all he could wish 
to look when he is to look like a fool — on the dignities 
and the graces, the proprieties and the decencies; but 
his beautiful theories, as far as he is concerned, may 
only act as a blazing light thrown for his own especial 
benefit on his abortive efforts to carry them out. 

To give a list of possible accidents would be in a man- 
ner to catalogue the unforeseen. We can only choose 
random illustrations. There is the case, which made a 
great impression on us in our younger days, of the re- 
fined lady and county magnate who was as good a man- 
ager in her household as she was refined, polished and 
particular in her drawing-room. Those were the good 



A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 191 

old times. This model lady kept all the preserves un- 
der lock and key, including, of course, the currant jelly. 
On a great gala-day, when venison, as the penny-a- 
liners say, graced the dinner-table, the jelly was not forth- 
coming. Upon this the lady beckoned a tall and hand- 
some footman standing by, and whispered an inquiry. 
The footman was new to this work, and by some fatal 
misconception of the duties of a footman to the world 
and to himself, thought proper to give his answer in a 
loud and sonorous voice. The answer was : " Please, 
mum, Mrs. Botts say she hain't got none." The lady 
had forgotten to give the housekeeper the keys, and had 
them in her pocket. Now here was a crucial test of 
ultimate high breeding and high feeling. An ordinary 
stuck-up woman would have been consumed with shame 
and anguish. To rise above trumpery though most pro- 
voking accidents, to fall easily and gracefully into the 
joke of the situation, to laugh genuinely without affec- 
tation, and yet with a mixed good-natured concern for 
the delay occasioned to her guests, instantly and uncon- 
sciously revealed the true nature of the person. There 
is another story, also authentic, of a very beautiful girl 
who, having lost a front tooth in a fall, wore a false one, 
which she dropped one day by accident during dessert 
at a dinner-party. An intimate friend, with the omni- 
scient eye peculiar to some women, saw the accident, 
and instantly dropping her ring engaged the men in 
finding it, while the poor child in an agony of suspense 
recovered her tooth and replaced it unobserved. So far 
the trial was averted, but we may fairly speculate on her 
position if she had not recovered her tooth. Suddenly 
to drop a front tooth is no trifle. A girl must be a very 
heroic girl who would be able, without note, warning or 
preparation, to laugh off such an exposure with a sunny, 



192 A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 

sweet, unconcerned indifference, or without a wretched 
affectation that would bewry itself. Then, again, there 
is the case of the lady — very plebeian-looking, though a 
thorough lady — who, being invited to dinner, on present- 
ing herself was mistaken by the footman for a cook, and 
desired to sit down in the hall. In due time she found 
her way to the dinner-table, and the footman, amazed 
and dumbfounded at his mistake, thought proper to 
make her an elaborate apology in a long and confi- 
dential whisper. In this case history has a melancholy 
but not unnatural sequel to record. The lady blushed — 
not unseen, but amid the general astonishment — and 
broke into an agony of perspiration. 

" My dear fellow," said an old and intimate college 
friend to another looking down from the balcony over the 
crowd of bonnets below, " do just take the trouble to 
count in the second block, far away in. that corner of 
the room, the sixth and seventh places of the eighth 
row ; there are two of the most astonishing figures I ever 
beheld in my life. You must look at them ; one looks 
so like a cook, and the other so like a housemaid." " I 
see them," his friend answered very quietly; "the cook 
is my aunt, and the housemaid is my cousin." Of 
course his was the more triumphant position of the two 
for a moment. Yet neither of the two friends could 
w T ish to claim his seeming triumph. Both, in different 
ways, were suddenly and unexpectedly made to look 
like fools. It so happened that in this instance both 
men thoroughly enjoyed the joke. But it is possible to 
conceive circumstances under which the position of each 
would have been absolutely excruciating. And what is 
noteworthy in incidents so trivial and worthless in them- 
selves is, so to speak, their tremendous and perfectly in- 
calculable explosive power. An incident of this sort 



A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 193 

falls in the midst of the ordinary routine of life much 
in the manner of a shell. Deeper enmities, more last- 
ing consequences and more intense discomfort may 
arise from a ridiculous mishap of this kind than from 
downright plotting and mischief-making with malice 
aforethought. People, indeed, rebel against the fatality ; 
they try to steel themselves against the ridicule which 
suddenly covers them ; they agree with might and main 
that the thing is too absurd for a second thought; they 
strive with both hands, as it were, to replace all circum- 
stances in statu quo, as if nothing had happened. But 
the fact is there ; the thing is done ; the veil is lifted ; 
the hidden is revealed, as by lightning in the night, 
and the impression remains. The accidents we have 
mentioned do not touch men's honor or their character; 
but we cannot omit all mention of those cases in which 
folly is, or is supposed to be, mixed up with actual 
crime or with the breach of some one of the rules which 
the world punishes by social ostracism. Even if, as is 
frequently the case, the offence is subsequently con- 
doned, still, while the remembrance of it lasts, the 
offenders will remain marked men or women — at all 
events in their own estimation. A man may have passed 
not unscathed through the fire of pecuniary troubles, or 
may have been guilty of breach of promise of marriage, 
or may have committed the folly of marrying out of his 
station, or a thousand other things. In all such cases, 
even long after the offences are given, times and seasons 
will occur when those who are pardoned may still be 
doomed to look on a sudden like fools under the effect 
of a most casual and undesigned remark or incident; 
and perhaps to them, above others, the talent of being able 
to look like a fool with propriety is of the greatest value. 
We have said that a man's philosophy is best tried 



194 A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 

by his being made to look like a fool. But perhaps his 
philosophy would rather help him to console himself 
than to control his outward expression. To be able to 
console one's self for wearing rags and tatters is one 
thing, to wear them like a gentleman is another. The 
former is the man's philosophy, the latter is rather his 
art. No doubt the two may be connected, but it is 
possible to imagine a man perfectly resigned in his own 
heart to look a fool, yet wearing his calamity with the 
utmost grotesqueness, arising from his misconception of 
the outer world and of other people's thoughts. Every 
day we see people who have tumbled accidentally into 
a ridiculous plight, and who by their affectations make 
it infinitely more ludicrous. On the other hand, to be 
truly resigned is the first step to keep one's head cool 
and acting with common sense. But to keep a cool and 
clear head, to see distinctly through the hot vapors of 
wrath and shame under the sudden infliction of unmer- 
ited or unexpected ridicule, requires a very penetrating 
perception, a sense of the general indifference and muta- 
bility of the outer world, a delicate plasticity to disen- 
gage one's self from one's self, the faculty of looking 
down one's back and all around one's self, so to speak, 
as if surveying an indifferent stranger. The man who 
finds himself in a ridiculous position and instantly asks 
himself, " What should I think if So-and-so, for whom 
I do not care a straw, w T ere in the same fix, and how 
should I expect him to act under it?" has gone a long 
way toward protecting himself from any unnecessary 
consequences of his disagreeable position. As a rule, 
women, although they do not bear being ridiculed so 
well as men, bear much better than men being placed 
in a ridiculous position. We should almost be tempted 
to say that women cannot be made to look like fools at 



A FOOL WITH PROPRIETY. 195 

all. They are externally so much more natural than 
men ; they fall so much more easily, like cats, upon their 
feet ; they have such a curious and happy knack (as a 
rule, for of course there are exceptions) of laughing a 
ridiculous position off— such a gracious and beautiful 
power of perfect hypocrisy ; they are so plastic, so pas- 
sive and, below their outward animation, so impassive ; 
they so seldom know, or well know, when they are 
beaten, and they are such adepts at turning wormwood 
into nectar whenever they have to drink it, that we can 
only propose woman as man's best example when sud- 
denly called upon to look like a fool. 





PERSONAL FASCINATION. 




'OULD any one unravel the mystery of personal 
fascination he would surely reveal stranger things 
than " what songs the sirens sang" or the sym- 
^ phony of the Abyssinian maid "playing on a 
dulcimer." Subtle as magnetism, inevitable as 
chemical attraction, problematic as the very nature of 
physical existence itself, this force surrounds us on every 
side, and goes far to make our social life the complex 
thing we find it. Who can tell why certain men and 
women exercise such influence over those around them? 
—an influence often totally irrespective of the circum- 
stances usually held accountable for personal attraction. 
We do not speak here directly of the passion of love. 
We speak of the more complicated and hardly less 
potent fascinations to which men and women are sub- 
ject in their relations as social, moral and intellectual 
beings. Happily for us, our life is many-sided, and if 
domestic affections prove but apples of Sodom, there are 
sympathies awaiting us in the world beyond the fireside 
as pure and lasting. Thought and action will fail at 
times, and the mere sense of existence become a weari- 
ness of the spirit. But the spell of personal fascination 
holds us fast through all. There are persons here and 

196 



PERSONAL FASCINATION. 197 

there who can no more become common or unlovely in 
our eyes than the flashing meteor or the perfect rainbow 
of the summer. And why ? 

It is little wonder that the m) T stery appears so inscru- 
table while the facts are so contradictory. That an in- 
dividual extraordinarily rich in gifts and graces should 
have the power of attracting others seems natural enough. 
Beauty in a woman, for instance, holds as legitimate a 
sway over all hearts as a man's eloquence. An elevated 
moral tone and an intellect nobly exercised should 
surely bear weight with inferior minds. Wit and love- 
liness, grace and wisdom, must certainly bestow per- 
sonal sovereignty on the possessor. But on looking at 
facts we find that no rule can be applied at all. A man 
may be wiser than Seneca, a woman more beautiful than 
Clytie, without possessing any immediate power over 
others. There are persons into whose presence we enter 
awestruck as iEneas when crossing the threshold of the 
Sybils cave, but no divine afflatus breathes on our seer, 
his stature dwindles down instead of attaining greater 
majesty, and we go away uneditied and unbelieving. 
On the other hand, the men and women at whose feet 
we sit spell-bound are frequently deficient in the very 
qualities that are supposed to hold the world in fee. 
What does ugliness count for in such a reckoning? or 
instability of character? or a rugged manner? or even 
fickleness? It often happens that of two brothers the 
one who commands friends and allies by hundreds is 
not only inferior to the first, both morally and intellec- 
tually, but inferior to the mass of men and women he 
bends to his will without apparent effort. As often }^ou 
will find that out of several sisters the one who rules the 
domestic kingdom with unlimited sway, attracting and 
bewitching all those who enter it, is the least lovely, and 
17* 



198 PERSONAL FASCINATION. 

perhaps the least amiable. Nay, she may be downright 
ugly, and yet her subtle powers of fascination perplex 
and defy all the handsome women of her acquaintance. 

If not in moral and physical perfections, then, where 
shall we look for the secret of this strange magnetism ? 
Doubtless, such attributes as a melodious voice, a grace- 
ful elocution, and a characteristic manner account for 
much superficial admiration, but they do not account 
for the more lasting homage of which we speak. Go 
into an ordinary drawing-room and say whether the 
likes and dislikes of stereotyped society are insipid or 
no. In every circle there is sure to be one man or one 
woman whose powers of fascination are too strong to 
be always harmless. Abnormal influence over others, 
moreover, is apt of itself to lead to caprice and cruelty 
on the part of the persons who exercise it. The very in- 
tensity of the allegiance yielded by their worshipers is 
a temptation to submit them to another and yet another 
ordeal. Or it may be — and here we touch upon one of 
the saddest and strangest riddles that perplex the 
thoughtful — some fatal instinct impels us to play with 
our best affections as recklessly as savages play with the 
life they have not learned to make lovely. 

Life is as many-faceted as a diamond. Fresh interests 
crowd upon us from day to day till we are in danger of 
being helplessly swamped by them, but none usurp the 
sovereignty of the person who by sheer force of affinity, 
idiosyncrasy, call it what you will, seems to stand near- 
er to us than all the rest of the world. The domestic 
tie has evidently nothing to do with the question. 
Neither has sex, since one woman will often sway masses 
of women in a degree wholly marvelous. Nor can age 
be taken into account; men, and even women, far ad- 
vanced in years are not unfrequently " the cynosure of 



PERSONAL FASCINATION. 199 

all eyes" in a brilliant crowd. Still less must the allurer 
ments of outer circumstances presuppose an excessive 
influence over others. A duke may quite possibly prove 
a bore, and you turn from him to some shabby, appar- 
ently insignificant person, whose words hold you by 
magic force, whose presence seems magnified as he 
speaks, whose eyes flash inspiration upon you. The 
theory that moral supremacy and personal fascination 
go hand in hand is not tenable for a moment. Lament- 
ably enough, experience teaches that the very person 
whose will acts upon others like a charm may be a 
Comus or a Vivien. 

Beyond the isolated fact that intense power of throw- 
ing one's self into the interests of others constitutes 
sympathy, and sympathy attracts — that from this very 
reason health, without which it is almost impossible to 
exercise strong sympathy, is an invariable element of per- 
sonal fascination — that contrast, whether of character, 
outward appearance, or even circumstances, is often an 
allurement of the strongest kind — that eccentricity, or, 
to use a more exact word, bizarrerie, acts forcibly upon 
the imaginative — what do we know? How far is this 
power a gift and how far an acquirement? Why is the 
very fascination of some the repugnance of others ? 
What accounts for the supreme pleasure of being led 
hither and thither as the potentate of our affections 
wills? These conclusions and inquiries lead into still 
wider fields of speculation. The question, for instance, 
whether personal fascination is wholly a natural gift or 
a studied acquirement deserves an essay to itself. Of the 
men and women who enthrall and bewitch at pleasure, 
how many do it involuntarily, and how many by the 
force of countless infinitesimal sacrifices on the altar of 
popularity ! The analysis of a character coming under 



200 PERSONAL FASCINATION. 

the last category would surely offer the strangest psycho- 
logical phenomena. Brought within the focus of exact 
personal observation, submitted to the test of ordinary 
moral standards, compared with the results of every- 
day experience, without a doubt such a character would 
appear paradoxical, isolated, extravagant to the last de- 
gree. That an individual can so subordinate the mani- 
fold interests and the perplexing duties of life to an 
overwhelming passion for indiscriminate homage seems 
incredible ; and yet such a passion, and the gratification 
of it, are by no means uncommon facts in social history. 
The most trifling looks, words and actions of such per- 
sons have reference to the gratification of others ; and as 
it is impossible to go on systematically gratifying several 
people at once, their triumphs, however splendid, are 
very dearly won. " Humanity is my game," Mr. Disraeli 
makes the motto of one of his heroes. It would be diffi- 
cult to find one more mischievous, since the application 
of it is easy and the result palpable. Make humanity 
your game, and whatever your moral and intellectual 
shortcomings may be, by dint of patience, self-devotion 
and undeviating resolve you are sure .to run it down. 
Perhaps the attraction to be most safely affiliated to its 
proper source is that of contrast. Civilization has not so 
assimilated us but we may meet tp-morrow some man 
or woman wholly unlike any one we have known, read 
of or imagined before, and the mind is more affected by 
such a discovery than by the most perfect realization of 
preconceived gifts and qualities, however exalted. 

A case in point is the way in which a woman of 
genius who has emancipated herself from the trammels 
of conventional life leads and impresses other women, 
if she likes, for there must be some voluntas exercise 
of this or any other power. Enthusiasm is seldom more 



PERSONAL FASCINATION. 



201 



fervid, devotion seldom more intense, than is felt by 
those of her sex who voluntarily sit at her feet, and 
as voluntarily they will give up the enticements of a 
fashionable life and other social advantages to retain 
the privilege. No more pathetic chapter could be writ- 
ten of a work on psychology than one which should 
treat of the infatuation of women for women. On all 
infatuation must disenchantment at some time or other 
wait. Few, nevertheless, would not rather woo the 
beautiful princess of the Norse tale, who lived on the 
glass hill as smooth and slippery as ice, even at the risk 
of falls and bruises, than never enter Fairyland at all. 




GOOD LOOKS. 




EOPLE'S notions of beauty differ. Tamerlane's 
wife, who had no nose, was thought a belle by 
her contemporaries. A patrician of Venice had 
a scurvy little proboscis, and that was held of 
itself a sufficient disqualification for the doge's 
cap and ring. Some of the Greeks held blue eyes to be 
hideous, and Dioscorides tells us they had an art — the 
same practiced, perhaps, centuries afterward at Donny- 
brook Fair — of making them black. Hunchbacks have 
had their admirers, who contend that the dorsal curva- 
ture is the true line of beauty, and that the hump, so 
far from being a deformity, " as dull fools suppose," is 
in itself a graceful ornament, seeing that in its outline 
it approximates the figure so many illustrious objects in 
Nature assume — to wit, the sun, the terrestrial globe, the 
span above us of aerial blue, the head of man, seat of 
his intellect and organ of his will. Still, however much 
men may differ in their conceptions of the beautiful, cer- 
tain it is that whatever they esteem beautiful invariably 
engages their affections and provokes their desires. They 
invariably recognize its claims to consideration, and by 
the very constitution of their minds are prone to asso- 
ciate its presence with everything that is good, pure and 

202 



GOOD LOOKS. 203 

virtuous. Suetonius tells us that at all periods of his 
life and health Augustus was beautiful, and owed to his 
good looks his uniform good fortune. We know that he 
took unusual care to preserve his personal appearance, 
for, to guard himself against the deteriorating influences 
of atmospheric changes, he would clothe himself with 
such a variety of garments that it was popularly said 
he carried the wardrobe of a family upon his single back. 
Alexander Severus was so anxious to delay the approach 
of decrepitude, with its attendant crowsfeet and wrinkles, 
and retain as long as might be the bloom and beauty 
of youthfulness and vigor, that, although free from all 
gluttonous propensities whatever, he w r ould devour a 
whole hare daily, for- the consumption of hare's flesh 
was in his days accounted a sovereign antidote for the 
withering effects of time and an efficient prophylactic 
against the damaging consequences of old age. The 
warlike emperor was well aware how much his outward 
man contributed to his influence, and acted a wise part 
accordingly in seeking to preserve in its freshness what 
Shakespeare irreverently enough calls the " muddy ves- 
ture of decay." These are antique examples ; some may 
be cited belonging to more recent times, in w r hich the 
possession of beauty is esteemed a kind of merit. 

Without referring to the well-known anecdote of Bap- 
tista Porta having dedicated one of his first works to the 
Cardinal d'Este merely, as he says, because the cardinal 
was a good-looking fellow, w r e find a Parliament of Ed- 
ward IV. thinking it neither unbecoming their dignity 
nor that of the king, in an address of both houses to the 
throne, to advert to the "beaute of person that it have 
pleased Almighty God to bless you with," and we also 
find the grave Lord Burleigh, himself comely even in 
Old age, if he be limned aright on the canvas which has 



204 GOOD LOOKS. 

descended to us, in writing to his son, Robert Cecil, then 
Secretary of State, respecting some new judges about to 
be made, observing, " As for choice of Baron (of the 
Exchequer), I think Sergeant Heale able both for learn- 
ing, wealth and strength of body to continue, being also 
a personable man, ivhich I ivish to be regarded in choice of 
such officers of public service." Like her father, Elizabeth 
was careful to admit into her household none but those, 
says Osborne, of " stature and birth," and positively re- 
fused the services of a gentleman in these respects well 
qualified to attend her, only because one of his jaws was 
deficient of a tooth ! Her successor, James I., as Lord 
Thomas Howard once wrote from the court to Sir John 
Harrington, " dwelt on good looks and handsome accou- 
trements. Eighteen servants," he adds, " were lately dis- 
charged, and many more will be discarded, who are not 
to his liking in these matters." The celebrated Lord 
Derby, too (the one who was beheaded at Bolton), in his 
" Advice to his Son " is careful to remark, " It is very 
handsome to have comely men to serve you." 

Indeed, through the Middle Ages it was a prevalent 
belief that the ugliness of the wicked— and the wicked 
were ever ugly — was in precise proportion to their wicked- 
ness, and so the Spirit of Evil himself was ever pictured 
as abominably hideous and revoltingly frightful; very 
unlike the "not less than archangel ruined" as his out- 
ward presentment is portrayed by Milton. "As ugly 
as sin," " diabolically hideous," are phrases to be found 
in other languages besides our own. In the same way 
virtue and goodness, the attributes of the saint, the 
characteristics of the angel, are habitually linked, both 
in idea and expression, with either majestic charms or en- 
chanting loveliness. "As beautiful as an angel," "seraph- 
ic beauty," are modes of expression familiar to our lips ; 



GOOD LOOKS. 205 

and furthermore, it is usual enough, when the desire is 
to convey approbation of a certain line of conduct, to 
say such conduct was "decidedly handsome." Hereby 
we discover the connection which unconsciously, per- 
haps, subsists in our minds between things which are 
true, honest and just, and things which are lovely. Of 
course, people who set up for philosophers, especially 
those to whom Nature has acted the part rather of the 
stepmother than the nursing mother, affect to underrate 
the importance of a shapely figure and agreeable visage, 
and have many a well-worn proverb, such as " Beauty is 
but skin deep," " Handsome is that handsome does," 
and the like, to vindicate their opinions or console them 
in their misfortune. Mr. Hay, however, a wealthy gen- 
tleman of the last century, who wooed the Muses with- 
out much success, and had a seat in Parliament to boot, 
was as misshapen a dwarf as any that of old made sport 
in royal or baronial halls. In his essay on deformity 
he frankly admits, whilst he ingeniously palliates, the 
disadvantages which belong to an uncomely exterior. 
" Bodily deformity," says he, " is very rare, and therefore 
a person so distinguished has ill-luck in a lottery where 
there are a thousand prizes to one blank. Among the 
five hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen in the House of 
Commons, I am the only one that is so, thanks to my 
worthy constituents, who never objected to my person, 
and I hope never to give them cause to object to my 
behavior !" 

When Job Ben Solomon, an African chief, was in 
England, he visited Dr. Watts, who, with more curiosity 
than politeness, inquired how it chanced he and his 
countrymen were black, when, in common with Eu- 
ropeans, they were descended from Adam, a white man. 
The retort was immediate and incisive : " Adam white ! 

18 



206 GOOD LOOKS. 

How know you Adam white? we tink Adam black. 
How come you white?" Now, there are writers on 
sesthetics who, in defiance of popular prejudice, .main- 
tain that black is the normal hue of men's complexion, 
and that the " pale faces" of Europe must have passed 
through some process of degeneration before they ac- 
quired the pallor they now exhibit. Ethnologists teach 
that in the course of time, and when exposed to certain 
climatic influences, the dusky races of mankind gener- 
ally become fairer, whilst of the reverse no instance is 
known. There is a strong presumption, then, that our 
first parents had more of the sable than the brunette in 
their complexions, and for aught we know might have 
rivaled Sambo himself in the depth of his ebon hue. 

The glory of man, says an authority not to be dis- 
puted, is in his strength, and w*e may safely affirm that 
the glory of woman is in her beauty ; and just as a man, 
when natural strength is denied to him in the fullness 
he desires, resorts to artificial means for supplying the 
defect, so does woman endeavor to redress the partiality 
and counteract the parsimony of Nature by a recourse 
to the ingenuities of art, the innocent deceptions of the 
toilet-table and the wardrobe. Of course, there are some 
who, on one ground or other, will object to this practical 
mendacity, not the less real because it finds no expres- 
sion in words; but such cynicism may be dismissed with 
contempt. It arises, nine times out of ten, from that 
base and wretched jealousy of woman's influence which 
too often haunts the masculine heart, and whose bitter- 
ness can only be exceeded by its impotence. Could 
there be anything more contemptible than the bill of in- 
dictment which Euripides preferred against Jove for 
having sent woman into the world only to reduce man 
to bondage with her charms ? — as though the poor hen- 



GOOD LOOKS. 207 

pecked deity was not himself as much a slave to benuty 
as any terrestrial mortal, and did not pass his miserable 
days under the thumb of all the pretty goddesses in 
Olympus ! 

" If, Romans," quoth Metellus Numidicus, u we could 
do without a wife, we should all be free from that source 
of vexation ; but as Nature has so ordered it that we can- 
not live without them happily, or without them at all, 
we had" — for that is his real meaning — " best take our 
physic like sensible men." 

The looking-glass, one of the choicest pieces of artil- 
lery in woman's arsenal, was loudly denounced by 
Clemens Alexandrinus. The old Father — if we may with 
propriety ascribe that title to a celibate — asserts that 
every woman, who looks into a glass violates a divine 
commandment, for she makes an image of herself for 
idolatrous purposes. But the Egyptian mistakes the 
matter widely if he supposes it is the woman that is the 
idolater. Take it at the very worst, woman commits no 
idolatry herself; she does not worship her own reflected 
loveliness ; she only gives opportunity for others to do 
so ; she is but the occasion of idolatry to others, but does 
not herself share in the sin. 

Good looks are, no doubt, good things, but even in 
looks which require another adjective than good a dif- 
ference is observable, as is well expounded by Grose. 
" Ugliness," he says, " according to our local idea, may 
be divided into genteel and vulgar. The difference be- 
tween these kinds of ugliness seems to be that the former 
is positive or redundant, the latter wanting or negative. 
The one seems to have passed through the limits of 
beauty, the other never to have arrived at them." 




PLAINNESS AND ILL-FAVOR. 




OW strange that, while our internal mechanism 
and organization are so perfect, perfect symmetry 
in the outer man should he so rare, that there 
should be so many plain people in the world! 
Such is not the unreasonable lament of a refined 
taste, looking abroad for the gratification of its love for 
beauty and fair proportion, and finding such rare and 
scanty indulgence of the heaven-born longing. It is a 
truth that most of the people we meet in the streets and 
highways are plain. We have a different standard for 
our home friends, for relations and intimates, but out of 
doors it is an exception to meet a comely, noble-formed, 
handsome man or woman. It is a surprise when we do 
meet with such. So unusual, indeed, is it to meet with 
perfect, or anything approaching to perfect, symmetry 
that one of the attendants on beauty is surprised. We 
gaze upon something rare, unaccustomed, startling from 
its singularity. This reflection has been put by the 
acutest of our female novelists into the mouth of a vain 
u well-looking " man, who cynically complains of Bath 
for the multitude of its plain women. If by chance you 
see a pretty woman (let us explain that this was written 
half a century ago), she is sure to be followed by thirty 

208 



PLAINNESS AND ILL-FAVOR. 209 

or thirty-five frights, and once — though, to be sure, it was 
on a frosty day — he had counted eighty-seven in succes- 
sion without a tolerable face among them. And with 
the men it was even worse, so that a decent-looking man 
excited quite an embarrassing sensation. The univer- 
sality of this fact, stated broadly, is fortunate for those 
among us who cannot boast of anything typical or god- 
like in face or form. There are enough plain people — 
ordinary, some persons call it, to show how universal is 
the doom — to keep us in countenance. It would be 
dreadful to be the only ugly fellow in the world. But 
even as it is, it cannot but be annoying to men — and es- 
pecially to women — whose place, or works, or deeds give 
them prominence, not to be better worth looking at, to 
be so little good-looking as, sooth to say, they often are. 
" What do you think when so many people come to see 
you ?" Miss Bremer was asked by her American adorers. 
" I wish that I was handsomer," was the reply. " When 
all things are blossoming," writes a woman of showy 
conspicuous genius, "it seems strange not to blossom too ; 
man is the slowest aloe, and I am such a shabby plant, 
of such coarse tissue, I hate not to be beautiful when all 
around is so." Who can tell how much Goldsmith's 
ugliness, which made him a butt in childhood, was at 
the bottom of the restless, unsatisfied vanity of which so 
much is written? With men, however, the conscious- 
ness of ugliness has constantly acted as an intellectual 
stimulus. Because Bichard III. was rudely stamped, 
wanting love's majesty, he shaped out a great unscrupu- 
lous career for himself, and Mirabeau and Wilkes might 
perhaps not have made so public a figure if they had 
been less conspicuously ill-fav6red. But the draught 
was probably bitter all the same. The most successful 
jester on his own ill-looks finds the fun very flat in his 
18* 



210 PLAINNESS AND ILL-FA VOR. 

solitary hours, but consciousness makes him restless ; and 
where it is hopeless to pass unnoticed, his best expedient 
is to be pleasant upon himself. 

These people are ugly because they cannot help it, but 
we have been led to our subject by the reflection how 
much of the depressing ugliness of the world is of man's 
own making, and need not be if people did not fall into 
tricks and bad habits of feature and countenance. We 
are not going deep ; we are not entering into the question 
how far the principle of selection might improve the 
aspect of humanity, how bright thought might elevate, 
the practice of virtue beautify, immunity irom poverty 
and vulgar cares ennoble the race. What we note here 
is the universality of tricks and bad habits of counte- 
nance which need not have a worse source than neglect 
of appearance, inducing an aggregate of uncomeliness for 
which nature is not accountable. In keen wind and 
frost people cannot command their best looks, but ob- 
serve one face after another as we drive along the road 
on a summer's day. How many faces are twisted into 
a permanence of ill-looks merely by screwing up the eyes 
against the sun's rays ? The poor tramp cannot help the 
tan, nor the sunburnt face, nor the freckles, but the utter 
abandonment to the screw-nose, mouth, forehead, all 
gathered into an unnatural coalition for miles at a time, 
implies an absence of self-respect, and this he could help. 
It is the instinct of the observer to call himself to account 
on meeting one of these masks, to compose his features 
lest he should have given way to the degrading yet nat- 
ural temptation. Again, that too common downward 
look and heavy mouth is a trick. One would not like 
to pass the scowling ditcher in an unfrequented lane, but 
the fellow is honest and hard-working ; the scowl is but 
a trick acquired behind his wheelbarrow. So is the grin 



PLAINNESS AND ILL-FAVOR. 211 

which confers such a peculiar turpitude on many a coun- 
tenance for which heart and brain are by no means 
answerable. And the women of the poorer class in 
streets and railway stations ! What blinking eyes, what 
lowering brows, what abandonment of the mouth till it 
has grown to twice the size civilization would have kept 
it ! What seams and wrinkles and crinkles ! what mis- 
placed angles and corners ! If some invisible hand could 
smooth them all away, and show us only the natural 
wear and tear of time, what a transformation ! 

But, after all, active tricks belong rather to another and 
a higher class. There is the simper, which though some- 
times indicative of mental qualities may be only a habit 
of the muscles, the grimace of pre-occupation, the un- 
meaning elevation of eyebrows carrying the ears along 
with them, which strangely varies the repose of some 
physiognomies, the stare of absent eyes, the scowl of 
near-sightedness, the winks and twitches of restlessness, 
all indicating a certain carelessness, an indifference of 
what others think of us, which results in an injustice to 
nature. It is only in some occult way that they are 
characteristics ; they need not be, and the man would 
have been handsome without them. And how many 
tricks disfigure the laugh ! " You shall see him laugh till 
his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up," says Falstaff of 
Prince Hal — a self-abandonment which he acquired in 
company where self-restraint of any sort was least in 
his thoughts. And all tricks are objectionable, not only 
because they spoil a good face and exaggerate the worst 
points on a bad one, but because in their degree they 
outrage propriety. De Quincey, who expatiates on the 
meanness of Dr. Parr's personal appearance and his 
coarse and ignoble features, is careful to explain " first, 
that I that write this paper have myself a mean per- 



212 PLAINNESS AND ILL-FAVOR. 

sonal appearance," and next that "I love men of mean 
appearance," but he remarks how the original unkind- 
ness of nature "is enhanced by grimace, and further by 
the basilisk function of the eye," illustrating this by the 
trial it was to a nervous preacher to see a comical- 
looking old man from below leveling one eye at him. 
Tricks arise either from absence, shyness, or a sense of 
superiority and indifference to the opinion of the vulgar. 
Biography is full of the absurd personal habits of great 
men thus lifted out of the sphere of honest remon- 
strance. We have just read in Wickham's Correspond- 
ence of Suwarrow, who looked a man when engaged in 
business, but while entertaining company would walk 
about the room with bent knees and head and hands 
hanging down like an idiot. Miss Seward, the biogra- 
pher of Dr. Darwin, reports a habit in her hero which 
recalls that of the brutal duke of Lauderdale, who 
figures in the torture-scene of Old Mortality. We give it 
in her own would-be Johnsonian periods: "A strange 
habit was imputed to Dr. Darwin which presents such 
ah exterior of idiot-seeming indelicacy that the author 
of this tract is tempted to express here entire disbelief 
of its truth — namely, that his tongue Avas generally 
hanging out of his mouth when he walked alone. She 
has often of late years met him in the streets of Lich- 
field, alone and musing, and never witnessed a custom 
so indecent." Certainly the "hard features on a rough 
surface and general clumsiness," attributed to the poet 
of the Botanical Garden, did not need this aggravation. 
As a fact, the tricks we speak of are recorded mostly of 
persons who have no beauty to spare. Thus Margaret 
Fuller is described as of extreme plainness, and with a 
trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids. 
No doubt the consciousness of good looks, the mem- 



PLAINNESS AND ILL-FAVOR. 213 

ory of the image reflected in the morning mirror, is 
a preservative against distortion and grimace; while 
plain folks may throw themselves upon expression, 
and trust, as is often the case, that their glass does them 
less than justice, and that play of feature atones for 
ruggedness, clumsiness, or poverty of outline. But 
also the working of thought does in some people in- 
volve a visible effort and displacement of feature from 
mere innocent intentions. Especially where the mind 
guides the hand we may almost see pullies at work, as 
in Sam Weller writing his letter. Clenched teeth, lips 
drawn into a line, receding chin, all betokened a fixed 
determination to compass the matter in hand. The fea- 
tures in ungainly pantomime picture forth the inner 
struggle, till we learn to undervalue a result bought at 
such cost and pains, and to justify the seeming unfair- 
ness which prefers " felicities" to the achievements of in- 
dustry, " for they seem gifts, while the other seem penny- 
worths," and often dear at the money. 

Plainness is a misfortune so much to be aggravated by 
mismanagement, and to be redeemed and rendered toler- 
able by judicious treatment, that the consciousness of it 
should make no one unhappy. The ugliest of men 
boasted that he was only five minutes behind the hand- 
somest in the favor of the ladies. This may be true 
where wit is thrown into the scale. But the plain man 
is also more bound to the proprieties and scruples of the 
toilet than his well-favored brother. Old clothes and the 
suspicion of a soil tell on him with a damaging effect, 
and yet this care must never merge into foppery. If he 
hits the golden mean, his reward will come late but surely. 
At sixty or seventy-five he will be better worth looking 
at, be a pleasanter object for the eye to rest on, be wel- 
comed with sweeter smiles, than the sloven of the same 



214 PLAINNESS AND ILL-FAVOR. 

years, whatever his natural advantages. * And age brings 
to many a temptation to slovenliness. No one can pre- 
tend that plainness is no trial to a woman ; therefore we 
ought the more to honor the plain woman, who, hope- 
less of admiration, yet applies all the innocent arts of 
nicety, taste, and feminine tact to set off homely fea- 
tures to the best advantage, and to produce a tout ensem- 
ble not conspicuously unlovely. Fortunately it is a 
point on which an unlimited amount of self-deception 
is possible, for there is a charm wholly independent of 
regularity and color, and no woman can be sure that she 
has no faint air or shadowy touch of such fascination. 





WHAT DOES THE FACE TELL' 



WOMEN'S FACES. 




ITHOUT its quaint prejudices and delicious pre- 
possessions, without its foolish impulses and illog- 
ical likings, without its comic contradictions and 
absurd idealisms, human nature would be a dull 
and stupid blunder. The worst type of man is 
he whose actions you can always predict. A man with- 
out an obvious weakness is a dangerous character. And 
yet there are such men — men whose notion of heaven is 
that of a sort of translated Carlsruhe, with very straight 
streets converging to an accurate geometric centre. Cold 
as a jelly-fish, with no more human sympathy than a 
cat, moving as mechanically as a hydraulic engine, 
such men pass through life in an orderly and precise 
manner, filling respectably the office in Church or State 
to which they have been called, leaving the world in 
front of a fashionable funeral, and commemorated by a 
prim monument which does not mention their failings, 
for they never had any. These are the men whose criti- 
cism of a woman's face may be depended upon for its 
superficial accuracy. The odd blunders which ordinary 
men make in judging and speaking of women's faces are 
very amusing. The scientific spirit, which ought to ap- 
proach cautiously a careful definition, sets to capering 



215 



216 WOMEN'S FACES. 

and dancing like a harlequin, and finally flies off into 
the pure empyrean of idealism. Bold scrutiny of a pro- 
file gets transfixed by a glance from a pair of eyes, and 
dangles helplessly there, like a scare-crow in the rain. 
We have all noticed the absurd transition in the look of 
a man who has inspired laughing-gas, when, advancing 
with a prodigious and pugnacious frown on his face, he 
suddenly bursts into an idiotic giggle, and stands puzzled 
by his own sense of the humorous. This is the ridicu- 
lous plight in which criticism suddenly finds itself when 
about to scan a pretty woman's face. Indeed, it may be 
safely affirmed that no man (except he be of the jelly- 
fish order) can perceive that a woman who has a won- 
derful pair of eyes and a wonderful smile has also an 
awkwardly bent nose. Were he to take her photograph 
and trace with a pencil the outline of the face, his reason 
might compel him to acknowledge that, certainly, the 
nose was not quite straight. Another reference to the 
original, however, and, lo ! he has no more power of ar- 
tistic scansion than the shepherd who first saw the face 
of Aphrodite burst laughing through the white froth of 
the sea, 

In this matter Love is out of court. The freaks of ideal- 
ism committed by him are too prodigious to form the 
topic of an intentionally sane essay. The odd criticism 
which men who are not in love pronounce on the faces 
of the women they meet are, without any extraneous 
help, sufficiently curious. There can be no doubt of the 
fact that what might be supposed to be the chief crite- 
rion — accuracy of outline — is held to be of very second- 
ary importance indeed. The grand protest of Medieval- 
ism, and even of the Renaissance, against the tyranny of 
the unapproachable antique types, effected at least this 
one good in our notions of the human face — it gave value 



WOMEN'S FACES. 217 

to individualism and freedom to the choice of art. 
Henceforth there were no supreme forms, to approach 
which all the specialties of individual portraiture had to 
be smoothed away. Prominence and proper appreci- 
ation were given to specific characteristics, and the hu- 
man face, with its infinite varieties of form and expres- 
sion, with its innumerable artistic graces, was made a 
law unto itself. This tendency to recognize the beauty 
and artistic fitness of actual forms, in preference to a 
slavish obedience to certain sublimated " universals," 
was but the reflex of a sentiment which has run through, 
in many directions, all our modern life. Men no longer 
sigh for the perfectly beautiful woman. Regularity of 
the most faultless kind in physical form is held to be of 
lesser account than those variations which are supposed, 
rightly or wrongly, to indicate special emotional or intel- 
lectual characteristics. When a man thinks over the 
beautiful women whom he knows — that is to say, the 
women whose profile is correct, whose head and figure 
are admirably in accordance with artistic types — does he 
not invariably find that the handsomest women are also 
the dullest? Does he not in trying to decide which is 
really the most beautiful woman of his acquaintance 
choose out her whose irregularities of feature are lost in 
the movement and light of the face, in the glow and 
color of the eyes, in preference to the woman of cold and 
formal accuracy of outline? It may be said that we are 
begging the question in assuming that women of classic 
regularity of features are generally expressionless and 
formal, but we demand the premise on the ground of 
common experience. Somehow or other, the women 
whose life and grace are remarkable — so remarkable as 
instantly to attract and fascinate — almost never approach 
either the ancient or modern types of beauty. We do not 

19 



218 WOMEN'S FACES. 

at all mean to echo the vulgar belief that pretty women 
are invariably stupid. We leave mental qualities for the 
moment out of the question. The dullness of which we 
speak is not the dullness of mental vacuity, but that of 
conventional form. If you were to take one of the women 
out of the pages of the Bazar, and give her twenty times 
the genius of George Eliot, she would still look a fool. 
No power of brain could conquer the simpering stolidity 
of the perfectly regular face. Yet if pressed for an an- 
swer as to what they consider the perfect type of modern 
beauty, most men would think of one of these women in 
a book of fashions. There are the clear outlines of nose, 
mouth and chin, the smooth high forehead, th^ small 
ear, the rounded cheek, and the accurately placed eyes. 
It is given to some men to know one or two women' of 
this stamp in private life. Sometimes these outwardly 
angelic creatures are fools; sometimes, though rarely, 
they have mental qualities considerably above the aver- 
age. In either case the result is the same. A man sud- 
denly confronted by such a face admires it; he is not 
moved by an instantaneous sympathy toward it. Per- 
fectly beautiful women (there are not many of them, even 
if we accept the low type mentioned above) are much 
caressed by society. They adorn dinner-tables, are mag- 
nificent at balls, and make good matches. But they do 
not break hearts ; and the memory of their face, tortured 
with parting or glowing with the quick joy of meeting, 
does not haunt a man's life. 

Intellectual graces do certainly add to the chances of 
a face being beautiful; and without intellectual graces 
the most charming face can never be quite satisfactory. 
Emotional variety and expression, however, is the true 
key to the inexplicable influence of the most irregular 
face — a key which suggests considerations as to the 



WOMEN'S FACES. 219 

origin of this free emotional display which cannot be 
entered upon here. The possibilities of tragedy and 
comedy which lie in some women's eyes are sufficient to 
make the face strongly and strangely suggestive; you 
know that with the slightest application of the proper 
touch the whole mine of concealed emotion would fly 
up. Even the suggestion of a fierce temper (as a brief 
artistic study, be it understood) is better than the help- 
less dullness of the faultless and inexpressive face. Not 
unfrequently this indication of a fiery temperament lies 
in the eyes of a face which is otherwise unutterably soft 
and dovelike. In such a case the piquante contradiction is 
irresistibly charming if the woman be tender and fragile 
and winning, with a discreet and delicious veil of mildness 
tempering the powerful eyes. Such a woman invariably 
lends herself to any passing mood with an abandon which 
is either wonderfully fascinating and confiding or repel- 
lant and terrible. She is either affectionate with a sort 
of kittenlike, tantalizing playfulness, or she is a revenge- 
ful Juno with eyes of anger and words of sharp fire. 
There are other faces which express powerful emotion 
under powerful restraint, with all ,its suggestions of 
strong, enduring constancy and irreproachable delicacy 
of conscience. There are others that only speak of emo- 
tional weakness — of a certain infantine want of prin- 
ciple, joined to a want of will, and a prevailing misap- 
prehension of surrounding relations chiefly arising out 
of vanity. We may most easily find types of such wo- 
men in fiction, although they are common among us. As 
a representation of the last-named section take Hetty Sor- 
rel ; of the previous class take Nina Balatka, surety one of 
the most perfect figures ever conceived by a novelist; 
and for the first, Cleopatra may be taken as the one pe- 
rennial type. The list might be indefinitely expanded. 



220 WOMEN'S FACES. 

It is this suggestion of emotional power which gives 
the wonderful glamour to faces which are far from being 
strictly beautiful. Who is to define it or mark its limits? 
No two men are affected in the same way by the same 
face, because it depends on themselves to seize the full 
suggestiveness of the face — to catch the stray lights of 
the features, and construct unspeakable sympathies out 
of the raw material of features. The man who pro- 
nounces a woman plain or beautiful according to certain 
canons of form is either a hypocrite, a pedant, or a donkey. 
A face is beautiful in proportion as it says something to 
you which you are desirous of hearing. Different men 
have different methods of hearing ; and there are some to 
whom only the coarse message of health — conveyed in 
fresh color and plump cheek — is intelligible. There are 
others to whom such a face is blank and meaningless, 
who are willing to give away their life to win a smile 
from a certain pair of eyes, even although the eyes are 
green. Of course it is easy to see that a man with strong 
powers of idealism will construct a beautiful face out of 
unpromising materials ; but this is not to the point. 
What face is that which appeals to the sense of beauty 
of the majority of men? Not the plump inanity of the 
colored lithograph. Not the buxom country lass, who 
has all the beauties of which poets sing, but whom poets 
do not marry. Not the pinky doll of the book of fashions. 
Men love long eyelashes, because they seem to hide a 
secret. Men love those eyes which are transparent and 
yet deep, because there lies in them something of the 
unknown and the discoverable; and so men love faces 
that tell stories, and are coy, confiding, tantalizing, with 
vague and grand emotional possibilities hidden some- 
where about their expression. 

We have not said a word about the desirability of 



WOMEN'S FACES. 221 

marrying a woman with one of these tantalizing faces, 
nor of the desirability of marrying a woman with a 
pretty face at all. It is almost impossible to touch upon 
this branch of the subject without repeating the com- 
monest of commonplaces. This may be said, however : 
A plain woman who has a cultivated brain and good 
taste ought always to be able to hold her ground against 
pretty women. Emotional variety has so much nar- 
rower limits than intellectual variety. You can run 
over the gamut of a woman's loves and hates much 
sooner than you can measure the circle of a cultivated 
intellectual sympathy; and, once you have exhausted 
the possible chords, their repetition is likely to become 
a trifle wearisome. With good taste come the charms 
of artistic dress, pleasant, fresh, amusing conversation, 
and a graceful manner which does far more execution 
than the victims of it imagine. Through her intellect- 
ual sympathies a woman enlarges the horizon of her 
life, borrows a new lustre for her own use, and gets the 
credit of all the wit and grace and brilliancy which her 
extended vision embraces. 

19* 







BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 




(t HAT lovely woman fullfils only half of her mission 
when she is unpersonable instead of beautiful, 
- all young men, and all pretty girls secure in the 

consciousness of their own perfections, will agree. 

Indeed, it is cruel to hear the way in which heady 
youth despises ugly girls or fading women, however 
clever, whose charm lies in their cleverness only, with 
a counteraction in their plainness. To hear them, one 
would think that hardness of feature, like poverty, was 
a crime voluntarily perpetrated, and that contempt was 
a righteous retribution for the offence. Yet their pref- 
erence, though so cruelly expressed, is to a certain ex- 
tent the right thing. When we are young, the beauty 
of women has a supreme attraction beyond all other 
possessions or qualities, and there are self-evident rea- 
sons why it should be so. It is only as we grow older 
that we know the value of brains, and, while still ad- 
miring beauty — as indeed who does not? — admire it as 
one passing by on the other side; as a grace to look at, 
but not to hold, unless accompanied by something more 
lasting. This is in the middle term of a man's life. Old 
age, perhaps with the unconscious yearning of regret, 
goes back to the love of youth and beauty for their own 

222 



BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 223 

sake ; extremes meeting here as in almost all other cir- 
cumstances. The danger is when a young man, obeying 
the natural impulse of his age and state, marries beauty 
only, with nothing of more durable wear beneath. The 
mind sees what it brings, and we love the ideal we cre- 
ate rather than the reality that exists. 

A pretty face, the unworn nerves of youth, the fresh- 
ness of hope that has not yet been soured by disappoint- 
ment or chilled by experience, a neat stroke at croquet, 
and a merry laugh easily excited, make a girl a goddess 
to a boy who is what he himself calls in love and his 
friends call spoony. She may be narrow, selfish, spoilt, 
unfit to bear the burdens of life and unable to meet her 
trials patiently; she may be utterly unpractical and 
silly — one of those who never mature but only grow old, 
and remain great overgrown children to the end — with- 
out judgment, forethought, common sense, or courage ; 
but he sees nothing of all this. To him she is perfect, 
the "jolliest girl in the world," if he is slangy, or the 
" dearest," if he is affectionate ; and he neither sees nor 
heeds her potential faults. It is only when she has 
stepped down from her pedestal to the level of the nur- 
sery floor that he finds out she is but a woman, after all, 
and perhaps an exceptionally weak and peevish one. 
Then he knows that he would have done better for him- 
self had he married that plain brave-hearted girl who 
would have had him to a dead certainty if he had asked 
her, but whom he so unmercifully laughed at and dis- 
regarded when he was making love to his fascinating 
charmer. 

As years go on and reduce the Hebe and Hecate of 
eighteen to much the same kind of woman at forty, with 
perhaps the advantage on Hecate's side if of the sort 
that ripens well and improves by keeping, the man feels 



224 BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 

that he has been a fool after the manner of Bunyan's 
Passion ; that he has eaten up his present in the j)ast, 
and had all his good things at once. If he had but 
looked at the future, and been able to wait ! But in 
those days he wanted beauty that does not last, and 
cared nothing for brains that do; and so, having made 
his election, must abide by it, and eat bitter bread from 
the yeast of his own brewing. 

Many a man has cursed his whole life long the youth- 
ful infatuation that made him marry a pretty fool. Take 
the case of a rising politician whose fair-faced wife is 
either too stupid to care about his position, or else who 
imperils it by her folly. If amiable and affectionate, 
and in her own silly little way ambitious, she does him 
incalculable mischief by exaggeration, and by saying 
and doing exactly the things that are most damaging to 
him ; if stupid, she is just so much dead-weight that he 
has to carry with him while swimming up the stream. 
She is very lovely certainly, and people crowd her draw- 
ing-room to look at her ; but a plain-featured, sensible, 
shrewd woman with no beauty to speak of, but with 
tact and cleverness, would have helped him in his career 
far better than would Venus herself if brainless. And 
so he finds out when it is too late to change M. for N. in 
the marriage service. The successful men of small 
beginnings are greatty liable to this curse of wifely 
hindrance. 

A barrister once briefless and now in silk, an artist 
once obscure and now famous, who in the days of im- 
pecuniosity and Bohemianism married their landlady's 
pretty daughters, and toward the meridian of life find 
themselves in the front ranks of la haute volee, with a 
wife apiece who drops her h's and multiplies her s's, 
know the full bitterness of the bread baked from that 



BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 225 

hasty brewing of theirs. Each woman may have been 
beautiful in her youth, and each man may have loved 
his own very passionately; but if she has nothing to 
supplement her beauty, if she has no brains to fall back 
upon, and by which she can be educated up to his pres- 
ent social position as the wife of his successful maturity, 
she is a mistake. Mr. Dickens was quite right to kill off 
pretty childish Dora in David Copperfield. If she had 
lived she would have been like Flora in Little Dorrit, who 
indeed was Dora grown old but not matured, with all 
the grace and beauty of her youth gone, and nothing 
else to take their place. 

Men do not care for brains in excess in women. They 
like a sympathetic intellect which can follow them, and 
seize their thoughts as quickly as they are uttered, but 
they do not much care for any clear or special knowledge 
of facts; and even the most philosophic among them 
would rather not be set right in a classical quotation, an 
astronomical calculation, or the exact bearing of a polit- 
ical question by a lovely being in tarlatane whom he was 
graciously unbending to instruct. Neither do they want 
anything very strongminded. To most men, indeed, the 
feminine strongmindedness that can discuss immoral 
problems without blushing, and despise religious observ- 
ances as useful only to weak souls, is a quality as un- 
womanly as a well-developed biceps or a huge fist would 
be. It is sympathy, not antagonism, it is companionship, 
not rivalry, still less supremacy, that they like in women ; 
and some women with brains as well as learning — for 
the two are not the same thing — understand this, and 
keep their blue stockings well covered by their petticoats. 
Others, enthusiasts for the freedom of thought and in- 
tellectual rights, show theirs defiantly, and meet with 
their reward. Men shrink from them. Even clever 

p 



226 BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 

men, able to meet them on their own ground, do not feel 
drawn to them, while all but high-class minds are dwarfed 
and humiliated by their learning and their moral courage. 
And this is what no man likes to feel in the presence of 
a woman, and because of her superiorit} r . 

But the brains most useful to women, and most befit- 
ting their work in life, are those which show themselves 
in common sense, in good judgment, and that kind of 
patient courage which enables them to bear small crosses 
and great trials alike with dignity and good temper. 
Mere intellectual culture, however valuable it may be in 
itself, does not reach to the worth of this kind of moral 
power; for as the true domain of woman is the home, 
and her way of ordering her domestic life the best test 
of her faculties, mere intellectual culture does not help 
in this ; and, in fact, is often a hindrance rather than a 
help. What good is there in one's wife being an accom- 
plished mathematician, a sound scholar, a first-rate musi- 
cian, a deeply-read theologian, if she cannot keep the 
accounts square, knows nothing of the management of 
children, lets herself be cheated by the servants and the 
tradespeople, has not her eyes opened to dirt and dis- 
order, and gives way to a fretful temper on the smallest 
provocation ? 

The pretty fool who spends half her time in trying on 
new dresses and studying the effect of colors, and who 
knows nothing beyond the last new novel and the latest 
plate of fashions, is not a more disastrous wife than the 
woman of profound learning whose education has taught 
her nothing practical. They stand at the opposite ends 
of the same stick, and neither end giyes the true posi- 
tion of women. Indeed, if one must have a fool in one's 
house, the pretty one would be the best, as, at the least, 
pleasant to look at; which is something gained. The 






BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 227 

intellectual fool, with her head always in books and 
" questions," and her children dropping off like sheep 
for the want of womanly care, is something more than 
flesh and blood can tolerate. The pretty fool cannot 
help herself. If nature was but a stepmother to her, 
and left out the best part of her wits while taking such 
especial care of her face, it is no fault of hers ; but the 
intellectual fool is a case of maladministration of powers, 
for which she alone is responsible ; and in this particular 
alternative between beauty and brains we would go in 
for beauty without a doubt. 

Ball-rooms and dinner- tables are the two places where 
certain women must shine. In the ball-room Hebe is 
the queen, and has it all her own way, without fear of 
rivals save such as are of her own class. A very few 
men who care for dancing for its own sake certainly will 
dance with Hecate if she is light on hand, keeps accu- 
rate time, and manages her feet with scientific precision ; 
but to the ruck of youths, Hebe, who jerks herself into 
step every second round, but whose lovely face and per- 
fect figure make up for everything, is the partner they 
all besiege. Only to those exceptional few who regard 
dancing as a serious art would she be a bore with her 
three jumps and a hop ; while Hecate, waltzing like an 
angel, would be divine, in spite of her high cheek-bones, 
and light green eyes afleur de tete. But at a dinner-table, 
where a man likes to talk between the dishes, a sympa- 
thetic listener, if not absolutely frightful, and with pleas- 
ant manners, to whom he can air his stalest stories and 
recount his personal experiences, is preferable to the 
prettiest girl if a simpleton, and able only to show her 
small white teeth in a silly smile, and say " yes " and 
" indeed " in the wrong places. The ball-room may be 
taken to represent youth, and the dinner-table maturity. 



228 BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 

The one is the * apotheosis of mere beauty, in clouds of 
white muslin and a heaven of flirting ; the other is solid 
enjoyment, with brains to talk to and beauty to look at, 
in just the proportion that makes life perfect. A well- 
ordered dinner- table is a social microcosm ; and, being 
so, this is the blue ribbon of the arrangement. 

Every woman is bound to make the best of herself. 
The strong-minded women who hold themselves superior 
to the obligations of dress and manner, and all the pleas- 
ant little artificial graces belonging to an artificial civiliz- 
ation, and who think any sacrifice made to appearance 
just so much waste of power, are awful creatures, igno- 
rant of the real meaning of their sex — social Graise want- 
ing in. every charm of womanhood, and to be diligently 
shunned by the wary. This making the best of them- 
selves is a very different thing from making dress and 
personal vanity the first consideration in life. Where 
women in general fail is in the exaggeration into which 
they fall on this and on almost every other question. 
They are apt to be either demireps or devotees, frights or 
flirts, fashionable to an extent that lands them in illimit- 
able folly and drags their husbands' names through' the 
mire ; or they are so dowdy that they disgrace a well- 
ordered drawing-room, and in an evening party, among 
nicely-dressed women, stand out as living sermons on 
slovenliness. If they are clever, they are too commonly 
blue-stockings, and let the whole household go by the 
board for the sake of their fruitless studies ; and if they 
are domestic and good managers they sink into mere ser- 
vants, never open a book save their daily ledger, and 
never have a thought beyond the cheesemonger's bill 
and the butcher's prices. They want that fine balance, 
that accurate self-measurement and knowledge of results, 
which goes by the name of common sense, and which is 



BEAUTY AND BRAINS. 229 

the best manifestation of brains they can give, and the one 
which men most prize. It is the most valuable working 
form of intellectual power, and has most endurance and 
vitality ; and it is the form which helps a man on in life, 
when he has found it in his wife, quite as much as money 
or a good connexion. So that, on the whole, brains are 
before beauty in the solid things of life. For admiration, 
and personal love, and youthful enjoyment, beauty of 
course is supreme ; but as we cannot be always young or 
always apt for pleasure, it is as well to provide for the 
days when the daughters of music shall be brought low, 
and the years draw nigh which have no pleasure in them. 
20 




IDEAL WOMEN. 




dm T is impossible to write of one absolute womanly 
T ideal — one single type that shall satisfy every 
-W one's fancy; for, naturally, what would be per- 
fection to one is imperfection to another, accord- 
ing to the special bent of the individual mind. 
Thus one man's ideal of womanly perfection is in beauty, 
mere physical outside beauty ; and not all the virtues 
under heaven could warm him into love with red - hair 
or a snub nose. He is entirely happy if his wife is un- 
deniably the handsomest woman of his acquaintance, 
and holds himself blessed when all men* admire and all 
women envy. But for his own sake rather than for hers. 
Pleasant as her loveliness is to look on, it is pleasanter 
to know that he is the possessor of it. The " handsom- 
est woman in the room " comes into the same category 
as the finest picture or the most thoroughbred horse 
within his sphere, and if the degree of pride in his pos- 
session is different, the kind is the same. And so in 
minor proportions, from the most beautiful woman of 
all, to simply beauty as a sine qua non, whatever else may 
be wanting. One other thing only is as absolute as this 
beauty, and that is its undivided possession. 

Another man's ideal is a good housekeeper and a 

230 



IDEAL WOMEN. 231 

careful mother, and he does not care a rush whether his 
wife, if she is these, is pretty or ugly. Provided she is 
active and industrious, minds the house well, and brings 
up the children as they ought to be brought up, has 
good principles, is trustworthy, and even-tempered, he 
is not particular as to color or form, and can even be 
brought to tolerate a limp or a squint. Given the great 
foundations of an honorable home, and he will forego 
the lath and plaster of personal appearance which will 
not bear the wear and tear of years and their troubles. 
The solid virtues stand. His balance at the banker's 
is a fact; his good name and credit with the trades- 
people is a fact ; so is the comfort of his home ; so are 
the health, the morals, the education of his children. 
All these are the true realities of life to him ; but the 
beauty which changes to deformity by the small-pox, 
which fades under dyspepsia, grows stale by habit, and 
is worn threadbare by the end of twenty years, is only a 
skin-deep grace which he does not value. Perhaps he is 
right. Certainly some of the happiest marriages among 
one's acquaintances are those where the wife has not one 
perceptible physical charm, and where the whole force 
of her magnetic value lies in what she is, not in how she 
looks. 

Another man wants a tender, adoring, fair-haired 
seraph, who will worship him as a demigod, and accept 
him as her best revelation of strength and wisdom. The 
more dependent she is, the better he will love her ; the 
less of conscious thought, of active will, of originative 
power she has, the greater his regard and tenderness. 
To be the one sole teacher and protector of such a gentle 
little creature seems to him the most delicious and the 
best condition of married life ; and he holds Milton's 
famous lines to be expressive of the only fitting relation 



232 IDEAL WOMEN. 

between men and women. The adoring seraph is his 
ideal ; Griselda, Desdemona, Lucy Ashton, are his high- 
est culminations of womanly grace; and the qualities 
which appeal the most powerfully to his generosity are 
the patience which will not complain, the gentleness 
that cannot resent, and the love which nothing can 
chill. 

Another man wants a cultivated intelligence in his 
ideal. As an author, an artist, a student, a statesman, 
he would like his wife to be able to help him by the 
contact of bright wit and ready intellect. He believes 
in the sex of minds, and holds only that work complete 
which has been created by the one and perfected by 
the other. He sees how women have helped on the 
leaders in troubled times; he knows that almost all 
great men have owed something of their greatness to 
the influence of a mother or a wife; he remembers how 
thoughts which had lain dumb in men's brains for 
more than half their lifetime suddenly woke up into 
speech and activity by the influence of a woman great 
enough to call them forth. The adoring seraph would 
be an encumbrance, and nothing better than a child 
upon his hands ; and the soul which had to be awakened 
and directed by him would run great chance of remain- 
ing torpid and inactive all its days. He has his own 
life to lead and round off, and so far from wishing to in- 
fluence another's, wants to be helped for himself. 

Another man cares only for the birth and social 
position of the woman to whom he gives his name and 
affection; to another yellow gold stands higher than 
blue blood, and '• my wife's father " may have been a 
rag-picker, so long as rag-picking had been a sufficiently 
rich alembic with a residuum admitting of no kind of 
doubt. Venus herself without a dowry would be only 



IDEAL WOMEN. 233 

a pretty sea-side girl with a Newtown pippin in her 
hand ; but Miss Kilmansegg would be something worth 
thinking of, if but little worth looking at. One man 
delights in a smart, vivacious little woman of the irre- 
pressible kind. It makes no difference to him how 
petulant she is, how full of fire and fury; the most 
passionate bursts of temper simply amuse him, like the 
anger of a canary-bird, and he holds it fine fun to watch 
the small virago in her tantrums, and to set her going 
again when he thinks she has been a long enough time 
in subsidence. His ideal of woman is an amusing little 
plaything, with a great facility for being put up, and a 
dash of viciousness to give it piquancy. 

Another wants a sweet and holy saint whose patient 
humility springs from principle rather than from fear ; 
another likes a blithe-tempered, healthy girl with no 
nonsense about her, full of fun and ready for every- 
thing, and is roI particular as to the strict order or 
economy of the housekeeping, provided only she is at 
all times willing to be his pleasant playmate and com- 
panion. Another delights in something very quiet, 
very silent, very home-staying. One must have first- 
rate music in his ideal woman ; another, unimpeachable 
taste ; a third, strict order ; a fourth, liberal breadth of 
nature ; and each has his own ideal, not only of nature 
but of person — to the exact shade of the hair, the color 
of the eyes, and the oval of the face. But all agree in 
the great fundamental requirements of truth, and mod- 
esty, and love, and unselfishness ; for though it is im- 
possible to write of one womanly ideal as an absolute, 
it is very possible to detail the virtues which ought to 
belong to all alike 

In all countries, the ideal woman changes, chameleon- 
like, to suit the taste of man ; and the great doctrine 
20* 



234 IDEAL WOMEN. 

that her happiness does somewhat depend on his liking 
is part of the very foundation of her existence. Accord- 
ing to his will she is bond or free, educated or ignorant, 
lax or strict, house-keeping or roving ; and though we 
advocate neither the bondage nor the ignorance, yet we 
do hold to the principle that, by the laws which regulate 
all human communities everywhere, she is bound to 
study the wishes of man, and to mould her life in har- 
mony with his liking. 




POPULAR WOMEN 






fl HE three chief causes of personal popularity are 
the admiration which is excited, the sympathy 
f^t which is given, or the pleasure that can be be- 
C(^p stowed. We put out of court, for our present 
purpose, the popularity which accompanies polit- 
ical power or intellectual strength, this being due to 
condition, not quality, and therefore not of the sort we 
mean ; besides, it belongs to men rather than to women, 
who seldom have any direct power that can advance 
others, and still seldomer intellectual strength enough 
to obtain a public following because of their confessed 
supremacy. The popular women we mean are simply 
those met with in society, women whose natural place is 
the drawing-room and whose sphere is the well-dressed 
world, women who are emphatically ladies, and who 
understand les convenances and obey them, even if they 
take up a cause and practice philanthropy or preach 
philosophy. But the popular woman rarely does take 
up a cause, or make her philanthropy conspicuous or 
her philosophy audible. Partisanship implies angles, 
and she has no angles. If of the class of the admired, 
she is most popular who is least obtrusive in her claims 
and most ingenuous in ignoring her superiority. 

235 



236 POPULAR WOMEN. 

A pretty woman, however pretty, if affected, vain, or 
apt to give herself airs, may be admired, but is never 
popular. The men whom she snubs sneer at her in 
private ; the women whom she eclipses as well as snubs 
do more than sneer; those only to whom she is gracious 
find her beauty a thing of joy, but as she is distractingly 
eclectic in her favoritism she counts as many foes as she 
has friends ; and though those who dislike her cannot 
call her ugly, they can call her disagreeable, and do. 
But the pretty woman who wears her beauty to all ap- 
pearance unconsciously, never suffering it to be aggres- 
sive to other women nor willfully employing it for the 
destruction of men, who is gracious in manner and of a 
pleasant temper, who is frank and approachable, and 
does not seem to consider herself as something sacred 
and set apart from the world because nature made her 
lovelier than the rest, — she is the woman whom all unite, 
in admiring, the popular person par excellence of her set. 

The popular pretty woman is one who, take her as a 
young wife (and she must be married), honestly loves 
her husband, but does not thrust her affection into the 
face of the world, and never flirts with, him in public. 
Indeed, she flirts with other men just enough to make 
time pass pleasantly, and enjoys a rapid waltz or a lively 
conversation as much as when she was seventeen, and 
before she was appropriated. She does not think it 
necessary to go about morally ticketed, nor does she 
find it necessary for her dignity or her virtue to fence 
herself round with coldness or indifference to the multi- 
tude by way of proving her loyalty to one. Still, as it is 
notorious- that she does love her husband, and as every 
one knows that they are perfectly content with each 
other, and therefore not on the look-out for supplements, 
the men with whom she has those innocent little jokes, 



POPULAR WOMEN. 237 

those transparent secrets, those animated conversations, 
that confessed friendship and good understanding, do 
not make mistakes, and the very women belonging to 
them forget to be censorious, even though she is so 
much admired. She is a mother, too, and a fond one, 
so can sympathize with other mothers, and expatiate on 
her nursery in the confidential chat over five o'clock tea, 
as all fond mothers do and should. She keeps a well- 
managed house, and is notorious for the amount of 
needlework she gets through, and of which she is pret- 
tily proud, not being ashamed to tell you that the dress 
you admire so much was made by her own hands, and 
she will give your wife the pattern if she likes ; while 
she boasts of even rougher upholstery work which she 
and her maid and her sewing-machine have got through 
with despatch and credit. She gives dinners with a 
cachet of their own, and that have been evidently planned 
with careful thought and study ; and she is not above 
her work as mistress and organizer of her household. 
Yet she finds time to keep abreast with the current liter- 
ature of the day, and never has to confess to ignorance 
of the ordinary topics of conversation. She is not a 
woman of extreme views about anything. She has not 
signed improper papers, and she does not discuss im- 
proper questions ; she does not go in for woman's rights ; 
she has a horror of facility of divorce ; and she sets up 
for nothing — being neither an Advanced Woman desir- 
ous of usurping the possessions and privileges of men, 
nor a Griselda who thinks her proper place is at the feet 
of men, to take their kicks with patience and their ca- 
resses with gratitude, as is becoming in an inferior crea- 
ture. She does not dabble in politics ; and though she 
likes to make her dinners successful and her evenings 
brilliant, she by no means assumes to be a leader of 



238 POPULAR WOMEN. 

fashion, or to impose laws on her circle. She likes to be 
admired, and she is always ready to let herself be loved ; 
she is always ready too to do any good work that comes 
in her way, and she finds time for the careful overlook- 
ing of a few pet charities about which she makes no 
parade, just as she finds time for her nursery and her 
needlework. And, truth to tell, she enjoys these quiet 
hours, with only her children to love her and her poor 
pensioners to admire her, quite as much as she enjoys 
the brilliant receptions where she is among the most 
popular and the most brilliant. Her nature is gentle, 
her affections large, her passions small; she may have 
prejudices, but they are ladylike prejudices of a mild 
kind, mainly on the side of modesty and tenderness and 
the quietude of womanhood. She is woman through- 
out, without the faintest dash of the masculine element 
in mind or manners, and she aspires to nothing else. 
She carries with her an atmosphere of happiness, of 
content, of spiritual completeness, of purity which is 
not prudery ; her life is filled with a variety of interests, 
consequently she is never peevish through monotony, 
nor yet, on the other hand, is she excited, hurried, storm- 
driven, as those who give themselves up to " objects " 
and perfect nothing because they attempt too much. 
She is popular because she is beautiful without being 
vain, loving without being sentimental ; happy in her- 
self, yet not indifferent to others; because she under- 
stands her drawing-room duties as well as her nursery 
ones, and knows how to combine domesticity with social 
splendor. This is the best type of the popular pretty 
woman to whom is given admiration, and against whom 
no one has a stone to fling or a slander to whisper; and 
this is the ideal woman of the upper-class home, of 
which, thank Heaven ! we still raise a few specimens, 



POPULAR WOMEN. 239 

just to show what women may be if they like, and what 
sweet and lovely creatures they are when they are con- 
tent to be as nature designed them. 

Another kind of popular woman is the sympathetic 
woman, the woman who gives instead of receiving. This 
kind is of variable conditions. She may be old, she 
may be ugly; in fact, she is more often both than neither, 
but she is a universal favorite notwithstanding, and no 
woman is more sought after or less wearied of, although 
none can say why they like her. She may be married, 
but generally she is either a widow or an old maid; as, 
if a wife, her sympathies for things abroad are neces- 
sarily somewhat cramped by the pressure of the home 
life, and her sympathies are her claim to popularity. 
She is sincere, too, as well as sympathetic, and she is 
safe. She holds the ^secrets, both of opinion and deed, 
of all her friends, but no one suspects that any one has 
confided secrets to her before himself. She has the art, 
or rather the charm, of perpetual spiritual freshness, and 
all her friends think in turn that the fountain has been 
unsealed now for the first time. This is not artifice ; it 
is simply the property of deep and inexhaustible sym- 
pathy. It is not necessary that she should be a wise 
adviser to be popular. Her province is to listen and to 
sympathize, to gather the sorrows and the joys of others 
into her own breast, so as to soften by sharing or heighten 
by reduplication. Most frequently, too, she is not over 
rigid in her notions of moral prudence, and will let a 
love-sick girl talk of her lover, even if the affair is hope- 
less and has been forbidden, while she will do her best 
to soothe the man who has had the misfortune to get 
crazed about his friend's wife. She has been even known, 
under pressure, to convey a message or a hint ; and of 
the two she is decidedly more pitiful to sorrow than 



210 POPULAR WOMEN. 

severe to wrong-doing. She is in at all the misfortunes 
and maladies of her friends. No death takes place 
without her bearing part of the mourning on her own 
soul, but then no marriage is considered complete in 
which she has not a share. She is called on to help 
whenever there is work to be don^, if she is of the prac- 
tical type; if only of the mental, she has merely to give 
up her own pleasures and her time, that she may look 
on and sympathize. Every one likes her, every one 
takes to her at first sight, no one is jealous of her, and 
the law of her life is to spend and be spent for others. 

It not unfrequently happens, though, that she who 
does so much for those others has to bear her own 
burden unassisted; and that she sits at home sur- 
rounded by the spectres of despair, the ghosts of sor- 
row, which she helps to dispel from their homes. But 
tshe is not selfish ; and while she trudges along cheer- 
fully enough under the heavy end of her friend's crosses, 
she asks no one to lay so much as a finger on her own. 
In consequence of which no one imagines that she ever 
suffers at all on her own account ; amd most of her 
friends would take it as a personal affront were she to 
turn the tables and ask for that of which she had given 
so much to others. She is the moral anodyne of her 
circle, and when she ceases to soothe, she abdicates the 
function assigned to her by nature, and dies out of her 
allotted uses. 

Another kind of popular person is the woman whose 
sympathies are more superficial, but whose faculties are 
more brilliant ; the woman who makes herself agree- 
able, as it is called — that is, who can talk when she is 
wanted to talk, listen when she is wanted to listen, take 
a prominent part and some responsibility or keep her 
personality in the background, according to circum- 



POPULAR WOMEN. 24 i 

stances and the need of the moment; eminently a useful 
member of society, and popular just in proportion to 
the pleasure she can shed around her. But she offends 
no one, even though she is notoriously sought after and 
made much of; for she is good-natured to all, and peo- 
ple are not jealous of those who do not flaunt their suc- 
cesses, and whom popularity does not make insolent. 
The popular woman of this kind is always ready to help 
in the pleasure of others. She is a fair-weather friend, 
and shrinks with the most charming frankness from 
those on whom dark days have fallen. She is really 
very sorry when any of her friends fall out from the 
ranks, and are left behind to the tender mercies of those 
cruel camp-followers in the march of life — sorrow or 
sickness ; but she feels that her place is not with them 
— rather with the singers and players who are making 
things pleasant for the main body. 

But if she cannot stop to soothe the pillows of a 
dying-bed, or soothe the troubles of an aching heart, 
she can organize delightful parties, set young people to 
congenial games, take off' bores on to her own shoulders, 
and even utilize them for the neutralization of other 
bores ; she is good for the back seat or the front, as is 
most convenient to others ; she can shine at the state 
dinner where you want a serviceable show, or make a 
diversion in the quiet, not to say stupid, conglomerate 
of fogies, where you want a lively element to prevent 
universal stupor; she talks easily and well, and even 
brilliantly when on her mettle, but not enough to excite 
men's envy ; and she has no decided opinions. She is a 
chameleon, an opal, changing ever in changing lights, 
and no one was yet known to determine her central 
quality. All that can be said of her is that she is good- 
natured and amusing, clever, facile, and ever ready to 
21 Q 



242 



POPULAR WOMEN. 



assist at all kinds of gatherings which she has the knack 
of making " go," and which would have been slow with- 
out her; that she knows every game that was ever in- 
vented, and is good for every sort of festivity ; that she 
is always well-dressed, even tempered, and in (appar- 
ently) unwearied spirits and superb health ; but what 
she is at home when the world is shut out, never trou- 
bles the thoughts of any. She is to society what the 
sympathetic woman is to the individual, and the reward 
is much the same in both cases. But unless the socially 
useful woman has been able to secure the interest of the 
sympathetic one, the chances are that, popular as she is 
now, she will be shunted to the side when her time of 
brilliancy has passed ; and that, when her last hour 
comes, it will find her without the comfort of a friend, 
forsaken and forgotten. She is of the kind to whom 
sic transit more especially applies ; and if her life's food 
has not been quite the husks, at all events it has not 
been serviceable or enduring bread. 




BUTTERCUPS. 




3'U T is not the least debt we owe to the holidays that 
,1| they give us our buttercups back again. Few faces 
-™ have stirred us with a keener touch of pity through 
the whole of the season than the face of the pale, 
awkward girl who slips by us now and then on 
the stairs ; a face mutinous in revolt against its impris- 
onment in brick and mortar, dull with the boredom of 
the school-room, weary of the formal walk, the monot- 
onous drive, the inevitable practice on that hated piano, 
the perpetual round of lessons from the odd creatures 
who leave their odder umbrellas in the hall. It is amaz- 
ingly pleasant to meet the same little face on the lawn, 
and to see it blooming with new life at the touch of free- 
dom and fresh air. It blooms with a sense of individu- 
ality, a sense of power. 

In town the buttercup was nobody, silent, unnoticed, 
lost in the bustle and splendor of elder sisterdom. Here, 
among the fields and the hedges, she is queen. Her very 
laugh, the reckless shout that calls for mamma's frown, 
and dooms the governess to a headache, rings out like a 
claim of possession. Here in her own realm she rushes 
at once to the front, and if we find ourselves enjoying a 
scamper over the common, or a run down the hillside, it 

243 



244 BUTTERCUPS. 

is the buttercup that leads the way. All the silent defi- 
ance of her town bondage vanishes in the chatty famil- 
iarities of home. She has a story about the elm and the 
pond, she knows where Harry landed the trout last year, 
she is intimate with the keeper, and hints to us his mys- 
terious hopes about the pheasants. She is great in short 
cuts through the woods, and has made herself wondrous 
lurking-places, which she betrays under solemn promises 
of secresy. She is a friend of every dog about the place, 
and if the pony lies nearest to her heart, her lesser affec- 
tions range over a world of favorites. 

It is hard to remember the pale, silent school-girl of 
town in the vivid, chatty little buttercup, who hurries 
one from the parrot to the pigeon, from the stables to the 
farm, and who knows and describes the merits of every 
hound in the kennels. It is natural enough that the de- 
throned beauties who meet us at luncheon should wonder 
at our enthusiasm for nymphs of bread and butter, and 
ask, with a certain severity of scorn, the secret of our 
happy mornings. The secret is simply that the butter- 
cup is at home, and that with the close of her bondage 
comes a grace and a naturalness that takes her out of the 
realms of bread and butter. However difficult it may be 
for her maturer rivals to abdicate, it is the buttercup, in 
fact, who gives the tone to the holidays. There is a subtle 
contagion about pleasure, and it is from her that we catch 
the sense of largeness and liberty and physical enjoy- 
ment that gives a new zest to life. She laughs at our 
moans about sunshine as she laughs at our moans about 
mud, till we are as indifferent to mud and sunshine as 
she is herself. The whole atmosphere of our life is, in 
fact, changed, and it is amusing to recognize how much 
of the change we owe to the buttercup. 

It is impossible, perhaps, to be whirled in this fashion 



BUTTERCUPS. 245 

out of the whisperings and boredoms of town without 
longing to know a little more of the pretty magician who 
works this wonderful transformation scene. But it is no 
easy matter to know much of the buttercup. Her whole 
charm lies in her freedom from self-consciousness ; she 
has a reserved force of shyness behind all her familiarity, 
and of a very defiant sort of shyness. Her character, in 
fact, is one of which it is easier to feel the beauty than to 
analyze or describe it. Like all transitional phases, girl- 
hood is full of picturesque inequalities, strange slumbers 
of one faculty and stranger developments of another; full 
of startling effects, of contrasts and surprises, of light and 
shade, that no other phase of life affords. Unconsciously, 
month after month drifts the buttercup on to woman- 
hood ; consciously she lives in the past of the child. 
She comes to us trailing clouds of glory — as Wordsworth 
sings — from her earlier existence, from her home, her 
school-room, her catechism. 

The girl of twenty summers, whose faith has been 
wrecked by clerical croquet, looks with amazement on 
the implicit faith which the buttercup retains in the 
clergy. Even on the curate, shy and awkward as he is, 
she looks as on a being sacred and ineffable. 

We remember the story of a certain parson of our ac- 
quaintance, who owned to a meek little buttercup his 
habit of carrying a book in his pocket for reading in 
leisure hours. " Ah, yes," replied the eager little aud- 
itor, with a hush of real awe in her voice — "the Bible, 
of course !•" Unluckily, it was the Physiologie du Gout,, 

Still more does the sister of a couple of seasons wonder 
at the ardor and fidelity of buttercup friendships. In 
after-life men have friends and women have lovers. The 
home, and the husband, and the child absorb the whole 
tenderness of a woman where they only temper and 

21* 



246 BUTTERCUPS. 

moderate the old external affections of her spouse. But 
then girl-friendship is a much more vivid and far more 
universal thing than friendship among boys. The one 
means, in nine cases out of ten, an accident of neighbor- 
hood in school that fades with the next remove, or a 
partnership in some venture, or a common attachment 
to some particular game. But the school friendship of a 
girl is a passionate idolatry and devotion of friend for 
friend. Their desks are full of little gifts -to each other. 
They have pet names that no strange ear may know, and 
hidden photographs that no strange eye may see. They 
share all the innocent secrets of their hearts, they are 
fondly interested in one another's brothers, they plan 
subtle devices to wear the same ribbons, and to dress 
their hair in the same fashion. No amount of affection 
ever made a boy like the business of writing his friend a 
letter in the holidays, but half the charm of holidays to 
a girl lies in the letters she gets and the letters she sends. 
Nothing save friendship itself is more sacred to girlhood 
than a friend's letter ; nothing more exquisite than the 
pleasure of stealing from the breakfast-table to kiss it 
and read it, and then tie it up with the rest that lie in 
the nook that nobody knows but the one pet brother. 

The pet brother is as necessary an element in butter- 
cup life as the friend. He is generally the dullest, the 
most awkward, the most silent of the family group. He 
takes all this sisterly devotion as a matter of course, and 
half resents it as a matter of boredom. He is fond of 
informing his adorer that he hates girls, that they are 
always kissing and crying, and that they can't play 
cricket. The buttercup rushes away to pour out her 
woes to her little nest in the woods, and hurries back 
to worship as before. Girlhood, indeed, is the one stage 
of feminine existence in which woman has brothers. 



BUTTERCUPS. 247 

Her first season out digs a gulf between their sister and 
" the boys " of the family that nothing can fill up. 
Henceforth the latter are useful to get tickets for her, to 
carry her shawls, to drive her to Goodwood or to Lord's. 
In the mere fetching and carrying business they sink 
into the general ruck of cousins, grumbling only a little 
more than cousins usually do at the luck that dooms 
them to hew wood and draw water for the belle of the 
season. But in the pure equality of earlier days the 
buttercup shares half the games and all the secrets of 
the boys about her, and brotherhood and sisterhood are 
very real things indeed. 

Unluckily the holidays pass away, and the buttercup 
passes away like the holidays. There is a strange hu- 
mor about the subtle gradations by which girlhood 
passes out of all this free, genial, irreflective life into 
self-consciousness, the reserve, the artificiality of wo- 
manhood. It is the sudden discovery of a new sense 
of enjoyment that first whirls the buttercup out of her 
purely family affections. She laughs at the worship of 
her new adorer. She is as far as Dian herself from any 
return of it ; but the sense of power is awakened, and 
she has a sort of Puckish pride in bringing her suitor to 
her feet. Nobody is so exacting, so capricious, so uncer- 
tain, so fascinating as a buttercup, because no one is so 
perfectly free from love. The first touch of passion ren- 
ders her more exacting and more charming than ever. 
She resents the suspicion of a tenderness whose very 
novelty scares her, and she visits her resentment on her 
worshiper. If he enjoys a kind farewell over night, 
he atones for it by the coldest greeting in the morning. 

There are days when the buttercup runs a-muck 
among her adorers, days of snubbing and sarcasm and 
bitterness. The poor little bird beats savagely against 



248 BUTTERCUPS. 

the wires that are closing her around. And then there 
are days of pure abandoning and coquetry and fun. 
The buttercup flirts, but she flirts in such an open and 
ingenuous fashion that nobody is a bit the worse for it. 
She tells you the fun she had overnight with that 
charming young fellow from Boston, and you know that 
to-morrow she will be telling that hated lieutenant what 
fun she has had with you. She is a little dazzled with 
the wealth and profusion of the new life that is bursting 
on her, and she wings her way from one charming flower 
to another with little thought of more than a sip from 
each. Then there is a return of pure girlhood days, in 
which the buttercup is simply the buttercup again. Flir- 
tations are forgotten, conquests are abandoned, brothers 
are worshiped with the old worship ; and we start back 
and rub our eyes, and wonder whether life is all a delu- 
sion, and whether this pure creature of home and bread 
and butter is the volatile, provoking little puss who gave 
our hand such a significant squeeze yesterday. But it 
is just this utterly illogical, unreasonable, inconse- 
quential character that gives the pursuit of the butter- 
cup its charm. There is a pleasure in this irregular 
warfare, with its razzias, and dashes, and repulses, and 
successes, and skirmishes, and flights, which we cannot 
get out of regular operations of the sap and the mine. 

We sympathize with the ingenious gentleman who 
declined to study astronomy on the ground of his aver- 
sion to the sun for the monotonous regularity of its daily 
rising and setting. There is something delightfully com- 
etary about the affection of the buttercup. Any experi- 
enced strategist in the art of getting married will tell us 
the exact time within which her elder sister may be re- 
duced, and sketch for us a plan of the campaign. But 
the buttercup lies outside of the rules of war. She gives 



BUTTERCUPS. 



249 



one the pleasure of adoration in its purest and most 
ideal form, and she adds to this the pleasure of rouge et 
noir. One feels in the presence of a buttercup the pos- 
sibility of combining enjoyments which are in no other 
sphere compatible with each other — the delight, say, of 
a musing over In Memoriam with the fiercer joys of the 
gambling-table. And meanwhile the buttercup drifts 
on, recking little of us and of our thoughts, into a world 
mysterious and unknown to her. Tones of deeper color 
flush the pure white light of her dawn/ and announce 
the fuller day of womanhood. And with the death of 
the dawn the buttercup passes insensibly away. The 
next season steals her from us; it is only the holidays 
that give her to us, and dispel half our conventionality, 
our shams, and our conceit with the laugh of the but- 
tercup. 




SWEET SEVENTEEN 




VAST amount of poetry has always been thrown 
around that special time of a woman's life when, 

Standing with reluctant feet 
Where the brook and river meet, 

she is no longer a child, and yet not quite a woman — 
that transition time between the closed bud and the 
full-blown flower which we express by the term, among 
others, of Sweet Seventeen. Without meaning to be 
sentimental, or to envelop things in a golden haze 
wrought by the imagination only and nowhere to be 
found in fact, we cannot deny the peculiar charm which 
belongs to a girl of this age, if she is at all nice, and 
neither pert nor silly. Besides, it is not only what she 
is that interests us, but what she will be; for this is the 
time when the character is settling into its permanent 
form, so that the great thought of every one connected 
with her is, How will she turn out? into what kind of 
woman will the girl develop? and what kind of life 
will she make for herself? Certainly Sweet Seventeen 
may be a most unlovely creature, and in fact she often 
is ; a creature hard and forward, having lost the inno- 
cence and obedience of childhood and having gained 
nothing yet of the tact and grace of womanhood ; a 

250 



SWEET SEVENTEEN. 251 

creature whose hopes and thoughts are all centred on the 
time when she shall be brought out, and have her fling 
of flirting and fine dresses with the rest. Or she may 
be only a gauche and giggling school-girl,' with a mind 
as narrow as her life, given up to the small intrigues and 
scandals of the dormitory and the play-ground ; a girl 
who scamps her lessons and cheats her masters ; whose 
highest efforts of intellect are shown in the cleverness 
with which she can break the rules of the establishment 
without being found out; who thinks talking at forbidden 
times, peeping through forbidden windows, giving silly 
nicknames to her companions and. the teachers, and tell- 
ing silly secrets with less truth than ingenuity in them 
the greatest fun imaginable, and all the greater because 
of the spice of rebellion and perversity with which it is 
dashed. Or she may be a mere tomboy, regretting her 
sex and despising its restraints ; cultivating school-boy 
slang and aping school-boy habits; ridiculing her sisters, 
and disliked by her companions, while thinking girlhood 
a bore and womanhood a mistake in exact proportion to 
its feminality. Or she may be a budding miss, shy and 
awkward, with no harm in her and as little good — a 
mere sketch of a girl, without a line as 4 yet made out or 
the dominant color so much as indicated. Sometimes 
she is awkward in another way, being studious and pre- 
occupied, when she passes for odd and original, and is 
partly feared, partty disliked, and wholly misunderstood 
by her own young world ; and sometimes she has a 
cynical contempt for men and beauty and pleasure and 
dress, when she will make herself ridiculous by her 
revolt against all the canons of good taste and conven- 
tionality.- But after her debut in tattered garments of 
severe colors and ungainly cut, she will probably end 
her days as a frantic fashionable, the salvation of whose 



202 SWEET SEVENTEEN. 

soul depends on the faultless propriety of her wardrobe. 
The eccentricities of Sweet Seventeen not unfrequently 
revenge themselves by an exactly opposite mature ex- 
travagance. But though there are enough and to spare 
of girls according to all these patterns, the Sweet Seven- 
teen of one's affections is none of them. And yet she is 
not always the same, but has her different presentations, 
her varying facets, which give her variety of charm and 
beauty. 

The best and loveliest thing about Sweet Seventeen is 
her sense of duty — for the most part a new sense. She 
no longer needs to be told what to do ; she has not to be 
kept to her tasks by the fear of authority or the submis- 
sive grace of obedience ; but of her own free will, because 
understanding that it is her duty, and that duty is a 
holier thing than self-will, she conscientiously does what 
she does not like to do, and cheerfully gives up what she 
desires without being driven or exhorted. She has 
generally before her mind some favorite heroine in a 
girl's novel, who goes through much painful discipline 
and comes out all the brighter for it in the end ; and she 
makes noble resolves of living as worthily as her model. 
She comforts her soul, too, with passages from Longfellow 
and Tennyson and the Christian Year, and learns long 
extracts from Evangeline and the Idyls; poetry having an 
almost magical influence over her, nearly as powerful as 
the Sunday sermons she listens to so devoutly and tries 
so patiently to understand. For the first time she 
wakes to a dim sense of her own individuality, and con- 
fesses to herself that she has a life of her own apart 
from and extraneous to her mere family membership. 
She is not only the sister or the daughter living with and 
for her parents or her brothers and sisters, but she is 
also herself, with a future of her own not to be shared 



SWEET SEVENTEEN. 253 

with them, not to be touched by them. And she begins 
to have vague dreams of this future and its hero — dreams 
that are as much of fairy land as if they were of the 
young prince coming over the sea in a golden boat to find 
the princess in a tower of brass waiting for him. Quite 
impersonal, and with a hero only in the clouds, yet 
nevertheless these dreams are suggested by the special 
circumstances of her life, by her favorite books or the 
style of society in which she has been placed. The 
young prince is either a beautiful and high-souled cler- 
gyman — not unlike her own pastor or the new rector, 
but infinitely more beautiful — an apostle in the standing 
collar and single-breasted coat of the nineteenth century ; 
or he is an artist in a velvet blouse and with flowing 
hair, living in a world of beauty such as no Philistine 
can imagine ; or he is a gallant sailor, with blue eyes 
and a loose necktie, looking up to heaven in a gale, and 
thinking of his mother and sisters at home, and of the 
one still more beloved, when he certainly ought to be 
thinking of tarry ropes and coarse sailcloth ; or he is a 
magnificent young officer heading his men at a charge, 
and looking supremely well got up and handsome. This 
is the kind offutur she dreams of when she dreams at 
all; which is not often. The reality of her mature life 
is perhaps a stolid country squire, or a prosaic city mer- 
chant without the thinnest thread of romance in his 
composition ; while her own life, which was to be such 
a lovely poem of graceful usefulness and heroic beauty, 
sinks into the prosaic routine of housekeeping and 
society, the sigh after the vanished ideal growing fainter 
and fainter as the weight of time and fact grows 
heavier. 

Married men are all sacred to Sweet Seventeen when 
she is a good girl ; so are engaged men. For the matter of 
22 



254 SWEET SEVENTEEN. 

that, she believes that nothing could induce her to marry 
either a widower or one who had been already engaged, 
as nothing could induce her to marry any man under 
five feet eleven, or with a snub nose or sandy whiskers. 
Sweet Seventeen has in general the most profound aver- 
sion to boys. To be sure she may have her favorites — 
very few and very seldom ; but she mostly thinks them 
stupid or conceited, and resents impartially either their 
awkward attentions to herself or their assumptions of 
superiority. An abnormally clever boy — the Poet-Lau- 
reate or George Stephenson of his generation — is her 
detestation, because he is old and unlike every one else ; 
and the one that she likes best among them is the school 
hero, who is first in the sports and takes all the prizes, 
and who goes through life loved by every one, and 
never famous. For her several brothers she has a range 
of entirely different feelings. Her younger school-boy 
brothers she regards as the torments of her existence, 
whose unkempt hair, dirty boots, and rude manners are 
her special crosses, to be borne with patience, tempered 
by an active endeavor after reform. But the more ad- 
vanced, and those who are older than herself, are her 
loves, for whom she has an enthusiastic admiration, and 
whose future she believes in as something especially bril- 
liant and successful. If only slightly older or younger 
than herself, she impresses them powerfully with the 
sentiment of her superiority, and patronizes them — 
kindly enough, but she makes them feel the ineffable 
supremacy of her sex, and how that she by virtue of 
her womanhood is a glorified creature beside them — an 
Ariel to their Caliban. Now, too, she begins to speak to 
her mother on more equal terms ; to criticise her dress, 
and to make her understand that she considers her old- 
fashioned and inclined to be dowdy. She ties her bon- 



SWEET SEVENTEEN. 253 

net-strings for her, arranges her cap, smartens up her 
old dress and compels her to buy a new one, and while 
considering her immeasurably ancient likes her to look 
nice, and thinks her in her own way beautiful. Some- 
times she opposes and quarrels with her, if the mother 
has less tact than- arbitrariness. But this is not her na- 
tural state ; for one of the characteristics of Sweet Seven- 
teen is her love for her mother, and the need she feels to 
have of her better counsel and guidance ; so that if she 
comes into opposition with her it is only through ex- 
treme pain and the bitter teaching of tyranny and in- 
justice. This is just the age, indeed, when the mother's 
influence is everything to a girl, and when a silly, an 
unjust, or an unprincipled woman is the very rain of 
her life. But with a low or evil-natured mother we sel- 
dom see a Sweet Seventeen worth the trouble of writing 
about ; which shows at least one thing — the importance 
of the womanly influence at such a time, and how per- 
haps so much that we blame in our modern girls lies to 
the account of their mothers. 

Great tact is required with Sweet Seventeen in such 
society as is allowed her ; care to bring her out without 
obtruding her on the world, or making her forward and 
consequential, and without attracting too much attention 
to her. She is no' longer a child to be shut away in the 
nursery, but she is not yet entitled to the place and con- 
sideration of a member of society. And yet it would be 
cruel to debar her wholly from all that is going on in 
the house. To be sure there is the governess, as well as 
mamma, to look after her manners, and to give her rope 
enough and not too much ; but by the time a girl is 
seventeen a governess has ceased to be the autocrat 
ex officio, and she obeys h^r or not according to their re- 
spective strengths. Still, the governess or mamma is for 



256 SWEET SEVENTEEN. 

the most part at her elbow; and Sweet Seventeen, if well 
brought up, is left very little to her own guidance, and 
sees the world only through half-opened doors. Girls 
of this age are often wonderfully sad, and full of a kind 
of wondering despair at the sin and misery they are 
learning to know. They take up extreme views in re- 
ligion, and talk largety on the nothingness of pleasure 
and the emptiness of the world; and many fair young 
creatures whom their elders, laden with sorrowful ex- 
perience, think full of hope and joy, are ready to give 
up all the pleasure of life, and to lay down life itself, for 
very disgust of that of which they know nothing. They 
delight in sorrowful lamentations and sentimental re- 
grets put into rhyme, and one of the funniest things in 
the world is to see a girl dancing with the merriest in 
the evening, and to hear her talking broken-hearted- 
ness in the morning. It is merely an example of the 
old proverb about the meeting of extremes ; vacuity 
leading to the same results as experience. But, how- 
ever she takes this unknown life, it is always in an un- 
real and romantic aspect. Some of more robust mind 
delight in the bolder stories of Greece, and Rome, and 
wish they had played a part in the sensational heroism 
of those grand old times; while others go to Venice, 
and make pictures for themselves out of the gliding gon- 
dolas and the mysterious Council of Ten, the lovely 
ladies with grim old fathers and grim brothers acting as 
insufficient gaolers, and the handsome cavaliers seren- 
ading them in the moonlight. That is their idea of love. 
They have no perception of anything warmer. It is all 
romance, and poetry, and tender glances from afar, and 
long and patient wooing under difficulties and a little 
danger, with scarce a word spoken, and nothing more 
expressive than a flower furtively given, or a fleeting 



* 



SWEET SEVENTEEN. 257 

pressure of the finger-tips. They know nothing else and 
expect nothing else. Their cherry is without stone, their 
bird without bone, their orange without rind, as in the 
old song ; and they imagine a love as unreal as all the 
rest. When thrown into actualities, though — say when 
left motherless, and the eldest girl of perhaps a large 
family with a father to comfort and a young brood to 
see after — Sweet Seventeen is often very beautiful in her 
degree, and rises grandly to her position. Sometimes 
the burden of her responsibilities is too much for her 
tender shoulders, and she is overweighted, and fails. 
Sometimes too she is tyrannical and selfish in such a 
position, and uses her power ill ; and sometimes she is 
careless and good-humored, when they all scramble up 
together, through confusion, dirt, and disorder, till the 
close time is over and they scatter themselves abroad. 
Sometimes she is a martyr, and makes herself and every 
one else uncomfortable by the perpetual demonstration 
of her martyrdom, and how she considers herself sacri- 
ficed and put upon. Indeed she is not unfrequently a 
martyr from other causes than heavy duties, being fond 
of adopting unworkable views which cannot be got to 
run- in the family groove anyhow. If she falls upon this 
rock she is in her glory ; youth being marvelously 
proud of this kind of voluntary crucifixion, and think- 
ing itself especially ill used because it must be made con- 
formable, and is prevented from making itself ridiculous. 
But Sweet Seventeen is intolerant of all moral differ- 
ences. What she holds to be right is the absolute, the 
one sole and only just law ; and she thinks it tampering 
with sin to allow that any one else has an equal right 
with herself to a contrary opinion. But on the whole 
she is a pleasant, lovable, interesting creature; and one's 
22* R 



258 



SWEET SEVENTEEN. 



greatest regret about her is that she is so often in the 
hands of unsuitable guides, and that her powers and 
noble impulses get so stunted and shadowed by the 
commonplace training which is her general lot, and the 
low aims of life which are the only ones held out to 
her. 




MATURE SIRENS. 




OTHING is more incomprehensible to girls than 
the love and admiration sometimes given to mid- 
dle-aged women. They cannot understand it; 
and nothing but experience will ever make them 
understand it. In their eyes a woman is out of the 
pale of personal affection altogether when she has once 
lost that shining gloss of youth, that exquisite freshness 
of skin and suppleness of limb, which to them, in the 
insolent plenitude of their unfaded beauty, constitute 
the chief claims to admiration of their sex. And yet 
they cannot conceal from themselves that the belle of 
eighteen is often deserted for the woman of forty, and 
that the patent witchery of their own youth and pretti- 
ness goes for nothing against the mysterious charms of a 
mature siren. What can they say to such an anomaly ? 
There is no good in going about the world disdainfully 
wondering how on earth a man could ever have taken up 
with such an antiquated creature — suggestively asking 
their male friends, What could he see in a woman of her 
age, old enough to be their mother? There the fact 
stands, and facts are stubborn things. 

The eligible suitor, who has been coveted by more 
than one golden-haired girl, has married a woman twenty 

259 



260 MATURE SIRENS. 

years her senior, and the middle-aged siren has actually 
carried off the prize which nymphs in their teens have 
frantically desired to win. What is the secret? How is 
it done ? The world, even of silly girls, has got past any 
belief in spells and talismans, such as Charlemagne's 
mistress wore, and yet the man's fascination seems to 
them quite as miraculous and almost as unholy as if it 
had been brought about by the black art. But if they 
had any analytical power they would understand the 
diablerie of the mature sirens clearly enough, for it is not 
so difficult to understand when one puts one's mind to it. 

In the first place, a woman of ripe age has a know- 
ledge of the world, and a certain suavity of manner and 
moral flexibility, wholly wanting to the young. Young 
girls are for the most part all angles — harsh in their 
judgments, stiff in their prejudices, and narrow in their 
sympathies. They are full of combativeness and self- 
assertion if they are of one kind of young people, or they 
are stupid and shy if they belong to another kind. They 
are talkative with nothing to say, and positive with noth- 
ing well and truly known; or they are monosyllabic 
dummies who stammer out Yes and No, at random, and 
whose brains become hopelessly confused at the first sen- 
tence a stranger utters. They are generally without pity ; 
their want of experience making them hard toward sor- 
rows which they scarcely understand, and, let us chari- 
tably hope, to a certain extent ignorant of the pain they 
inflict. That famous article in the Times on the cruelty 
of young girls, apropos of Constance Kent's confession, 
though absurdly exaggerated, had in it the core of truth 
which gives the sting to such papers, which makes them 
stick, and which is the real cause of the outcry they create. 

Girls are cruel ; there is no question about it. If more 
passive than active, they are simply indifferent to the 



MATURE SIRENS. 261 

sufferings of others; if of a more active temperament, 
they find a positive pleasure in giving pain. A girl will 
say the most cruel things to her dearest friend, and then 
laugh at her because she cries. Even her own mother 
she will hurt and humiliate if she can ; while as for any 
unfortunate aspirant not approved of, were he as tough- 
skinned as a rhinoceros, she would find means to make 
him wince. But all this acerbity is toned down in the 
mature woman. Experience has enlarged her sympa- 
thies, and knowledge of suffering has softened her heart 
to the sufferings of others. Her lessons of life, too, have 
taught her tact ; and tact is one of the most valuable les- 
sons that a man or woman can learn. She sees at a 
glance where are the weak points and sore places in her 
companion, and she avoids them ; or, if she passes over 
them, it is with a hand so soft and tender, a touch so in- 
expressibly soothing, that she calms instead of irritating. 
A girl would have come down upon the weak places 
heavily, and would have torn the bandages off the sore 
ones, jesting at scars because she herself had never felt a 
wound, and deriding the sybaritism of diachylon because 
ignorant of the anguish it conceals. Then the mature 
siren is thoughtful for others. 

Girls are self-asserting and aggressive. Life is so 
strong in them, and the instinct which prompts them to 
try their strength with all comers, and to get the best of 
everything everywhere, is so irrepressible, that they are 
often disagreeable because of their instinctive selfish- 
ness, and the craving, natural to the young, of taking all 
and giving back nothing. But the mature siren knows 
better than this. She knows that social success depends 
entirely on what each of us can throw into the common 
fund of society ; that the surest way to be considered 
ourselves is to be considerate for others ; that sympathy 



262 MATURE SIRENS. 

begets liking, and self-suppression leads to exaltation ; 
and that if we want to gain love we must first show how 
well we can. give it. Her tact, then, and her sympathy, 
her moral flexibility and quick comprehension of cha- 
racter, her readiness to give herself to others, are some 
of the reasons, among others, why the society of a cul- 
tivated, agreeable woman of a certain age is sought by 
those men to whom women are more than mere mis- 
tresses or toys. Besides, she is a good conversationalist. 
She has no pretensions to any special or deep learning — 
for, if pedantic, she is spoilt as a siren at any age — but 
she knows a little about most things ; at all events, she 
knows enough to make her a pleasant companion, and 
able to keep up the ball when thrown. And men like 
to talk to intelligent women. They do not like to be 
taught or corrected by them, but they like that quick 
sympathetic intellect which follows them readily, and 
that amount of knowledge which makes a comfortable 
cushion for their own. And a mature siren, who knows 
what she is about, would never do more than this, even 
if she could. 

Though the mature siren rests her claims to admira- 
tion on more than mere personal charms, and appeals to 
something beyond the senses, yet she is personable and 
well preserved, and, in a favorable light, looks nearly as 
young as ever. So the men say who knew her when she 
was twenty ; who loved her then, and have gone on lov- 
ing her with a difference, despite the twenty years that 
lie between this and then. Girls, indeed, despise her 
charms because she is no longer young; and yet, she 
may be even more beautiful than youth. She knows 
all the little niceties of dress, and without going into the 
vulgar trickery of paint and dyes— which would make 
her hideous — is up to the best arts of the toilet by which 



MATURE SIRENS. 263 

every point is made to tell, and every minor beauty is 
given its fullest value. For part of the art and mystery 
of sirenhood is an accurate perception of times and con- 
ditions, and a careful avoidance of that suicidal mistake 
of which la femme passee is so often guilty — namely, set- 
ting herself in confessed rivalry with the young by try- 
ing to look like them, and so losing the good of what 
she has retained, and showing the ravages of time by 
the contrast. The mature siren is wiser than this. She 
knows exactly what she has and what she can do, and 
before all things avoids whatever seems too youthful for 
her years; and this is one reason why she is always 
beautiful, because always in harmony. Besides, she has 
very many good points, many positive charms still left. 
Her figure is still good — not slim and slender certainly, 
but round and soft, and with that slower, riper, lazier 
grace which is something quite different from the ante- 
lope-like elasticity of youth, and in its own way as. lovely. 
If her hair has lost its maiden luxuriance, she makes up 
with crafty arrangements of lace, which are almost as 
picturesque as the fashionable wisp of hay-like ends 
tumbling halfway to the waist. She has still her white 
and shapely hands with their pink filbert-like nails ; still 
her pleasant smile and square small teeth ; her eyes are 
bright yet, and if the upper muscles are a little shrunk, 
the consequent apparent enlargement of the orbit only 
makes them more expressive ; her lips are not yet with- 
ered, her skin is not wrinkled. Undeniably, when well 
dressed and in a favorable light, the mature siren is as 
beautiful in her own way as the girlish belle ; and the 
world knows it and acknowledges it. 

That mature sirens can be passionately loved, even 
when very mature, history gives us more than one ex- 
ample ; and the first name that naturally occurs to one's 



264 MATURE SIRENS. 

mind as the type of this is that of the too famous Ninon 
de l'Enclos. And Ninon, if a trifle mythical, was yet a 
fact and an example. But not going quite to Ninon's 
age, we often see women of forty and upward who are 
personally charming, and whom men love with as much 
warmth and tenderness as if they were in the heyday 
of life — women who count their admirers by dozens, 
and who end by making a superb marriage and having 
quite an Indian summer of romance and happiness. 
The young laugh at this idea of the Indian summer for 
a bride of forty-five ; but it is true, for neither romance 
nor happiness, neither love nor mental youth, is a mat- 
ter of years ; and after all we are only as old as we feel, 
and certainly no older than we look. 

All women do not harden by time, nor wither, nor 
corrupt. Some merely ripen and mellow, and get en- 
riched by the passage of the years, retaining the most 
delicate womanliness — we had almost said girlishness — 
into quite old age, and blushing under their gray hairs 
while they shrink from anything coarse or vulgar or im- 
pure as sensitively as when they were girls. Lafemme a 
quarante ans is the French term for the .opening of the 
great gulf beyond which love cannot pass ; but human 
history disproves this date, and shows that the heart can 
remain fresh and the person lovely long after the age 
fixed for the final adieu to admiration, and that the ma- 
ture siren can be adored by her own contemporaries 
when the rising generation regard her as nothing better 
than a chimney-corner fixture. Mr. Trollope has recog- 
nized the claims of the mature siren in his Orley Farm 
and Miss Mackenzie ; and no one can deny the intense na- 
turalness of the characters and the interest of the stories. 

Another point with the mature woman is, that she is 
not jealous nor exacting. She knows the world, and 



MATURE SIRENS. 26-3 

takes what comes with the philosophy that springs from 
knowledge. If she is of an enjoying nature — and she 
cannot be a siren else — she accepts such good as floats 
to the top without looking too deep into the cup and 
speculating on the time when she shall have drained it 
to the dregs. Men feel safe with her. If they have en- 
tered on a tender friendship with her, they know that 
there will be no scene, no tears, no upbraidings, when 
an inexorable fate comes in to end their pleasant little 
drama, with the inevitable wife as the scene-shifter. 
The mature siren knows so well that fate and the wife 
must break in between her and her friend, and she is re- 
signed from the first to what is foredoomed, and so ac- 
cepts her bitter portion, when it comes, with dignity and 
in silence. Where younger women would fall into hys- 
terics and make a scene, perhaps going about the world 
taking their revenge in slander, the middle-aged woman 
holds out a friendly hand, and takes the back seat gal- 
lantly, never showing by word or look that she has felt 
her deposition. She becomes the best friend of the new 
household ; and, if any one is jealous, ten to one it is 
the husband that is jealous of her love for his wife, 
or, perhaps, it is the wife herself, who cannot see 
what her husband can find to admire so much in Mrs. 
A., and who pouts at his extraordinary predilection for 
her, though of course she would scorn to be jealous — 
as, indeed, she has no cause. For even a mature siren, 
however delightful she may be, is not likely to come be- 
fore a young wife in the heart of a young husband. 

Though the French paint the love of a woman of 
forty as pathetic, because slightly ridiculous and cer- 
tainly hopeless, yet, they arrange the theory of their 
social life so that a youth is generally supposed to make 
his first love of a married woman many years his elder, 

23 



266 MATURE SIRENS. 

and a mature siren finds her last love in a youth. Ma- 
ture sirens are all very well for men of their own age, 
and it is pleasant to see them still loved and admired, 
and to recognize in them the claims of women to some- 
thing higher thafi mere personal passion ; but the case 
would be very different if they became ghoulish seducers 
of the young, and kept up the habit of love by entang- 
ling boyish hearts and blighting youthful lives. As they 
are now they form a charming element in society, and 
are of infinite use to the world. They are the ripe fruit 
in the garden, where else everything would be green and 
immature — the last days of the golden summer just 
before the chills of autumn come on ; they contain in 
themselves the advantages of two distinct epochs, and 
while possessing as much personal charm as youth, pos- 
sess also the gains which come by experience and ma- 
turity. They keep things together as the young alone 
could not do; and no gathering of friends is perfect 
which has not one or two mature sirens to give the tone 
to the rest, and prevent excesses. . They soften the as- 
perities of high-handed boys and girls, which else would 
be too biting ; and they set people at ease, and make 
them in good humor with themselves, by the courtesy 
with which they listen to them, and the patience with 
which they bear with them. Even the very girls who 
hate them fiercely as rivals love them passing well as 
half-maternal, half-sisterly companions; and the first 
person to whom they would carry their sorrows would 
be a mature siren, quite capable on her own part of 
having caused them. It would be hard, indeed, if the loss 
of youth did not bring with it some compensations ; but 
the mature siren suffers less from that loss than any other 
kind of women. Indeed, she seems to have a private 
elixir of her own which is not quite drained dry when 



MATURE SIRENS. 



267 



she dies, beloved and regretted, at threescore years and 
ten ; leaving behind her one or two old friends who were 
once her ardent lovers, and who still cherish her memory 
as that of the finest and most fascinating woman they 
ever knew — something which the present generation is 
utterly incapable of repeating. 




GREAT GIRLS. 




OTHING is more distinctive among women than 
the difference of relative age between them. Two 
women of the same number of years will be 
substantially of different epochs of life — the one 
faded in person, wearied in mind, fossilized in 
sympathy ; the other fresh both in face and feeling, with 
sympathies as broad and keen as they were when she 
was in her first youth, and perhaps even more so ; with 
a brain still as receptive, a temper still as easy to be 
amused, as ready to love, as quick to learn, as when she 
emerged from the school-room to the drawing-room. The 
one you suspect of understating her age by half a dozen 
years or more when she tells you she is not over forty ; 
the other makes you wonder if she has not overstated 
hers by just so much when she laughingly confesses to 
the same age. The one is an old woman who seems as 
if she had never been young; the other "just a great girl 
yet," who seems as if she would never grow old; and 
nothing is equal between them but the number of days 
each has lived. 

This kind of woman, so fresh and active, so intellect- 
ually as well as emotionally alive, is never anything but 
a girl— never loses some of the sweetest characteristics of 

268 



GREAT GIRLS. 269 

girlhood. You see her first as a young wife and mother, 
and you imagine she has left the school-room for about 
as many months as she has been married years. Her 
face has none of that untranslatable expression, that 
look of robbed bloom, which experience gives; in her 
manner is none of the preoccupation so observable in 
most young mothers whose attention never seems wholly 
given to the thing on hand, and whose hearts seem al- 
ways full of a secret care or an unim parted joy. Brisk 
and airy, braving all weathers, ready for any amusement, 
interested in the current questions of history or society, 
by some wonderful faculty of organizing seeming to have 
all her time to herself as if she had no house cares and 
no nursery duties, yet these, somehow, not neglected, 
she is the very ideal of a happy girl roving through life 
as through a daisy field, on whom sorrow has not yet 
laid its hand, and to whose lot has fallen no Dead Sea 
apple. And when one hears her name and style as a 
matron for the first time, and sees her with two or three 
sturdy little fellows hanging about her slender neck and 
calling her mamma, one feels as if nature had somehow 
made a mistake, and our slim and simple-mannered 
damsel had only made believe to have taken up the seri- 
ous burdens of life, and was nothing but a great girl, after 
all. 

Grown older, she is still the great girl she was ten 
years ago, if her type of girlishness is a little changed 
and her gayety of manner a little less persistent. But 
even now, with a big boy at college and a daughter 
whose presentation is not so far off, she is younger than 
her staid and melancholy sister, her junior by many 
years, who has gone in for the immensities and the wor- 
ship of sorrow, who thinks laughter the sign of a vacant 
mind, and that to be interesting and picturesque a woman 

23* 



270 GREAT GIBLS. 

must be mournful and have a defective digestion. Her 
sister looks as if all that makes life worth living for lay 
behind her, and only the grave beyond ; she, the great 
girl, with her bright face and even temper, believes that 
her future will be as joyous as. her present, as innocent 
as her past, as full of love and as purely happy. She 
has known some sorrows, truly, and she has gained ex- 
perience such as comes only through the rending of the 
heartstrings, but nothing that she has passed through 
has seared or soured her; and if it has taken off just the 
lighter edge of her girlishness, it has left the core as bright 
and cheery as ever. She is generally of the style called 
" elegant," and wonderfully young in mere physical ap- 
pearance. Perhaps sharp eyes might spy out here and 
there a little silver thread among the soft brown hair ; 
and when fatigued or set in a cross light, lines not quite 
belonging to the teens might be traced about her eyes 
and mouth ; but in favorable conditions, with her grace- 
ful figure advantageously draped and her fair face flushed 
and animated, she looks just a great girl, no more, and 
she feels as she looks. It is well for her if her husband 
is a wise man and more proud of her. than jealous, for 
he must submit to see her admired by all the men who 
know her according to their individual manner of ex- 
pressing admiration ; but as purity of nature and single- 
ness of heart belong to her qualification for great girlish- 
ness, he has no cause for alarm, and she is as safe with 
Don Juan as with St. Anthony. 

These great girls, being middle-aged matrons, are often 
seen in the country ; and one of the things which most 
strike a resident of the city is the abiding youthfulness 
of this kind of matron. She has a large family, the 
alders of which are grown up, but she has lost none of 
the beauty for which her youth was noted, though it is 



GREAT GIRLS. 271 

now a different kind of beauty, and she has still the air 
and manners of a girl. She blushes easily, is shy, and 
sometimes apt to be a little awkward, though always 
sweet and gentle ; she knows very little of real life, and 
less of its vices; she is pitiful to sorrow, affectionate 
to her friends — who, however, are few in number — and 
strongly attached to her own family ; she has no theo- 
logical doubts, no scientific proclivities, and the con- 
ditions of society and the family do not perplex her; 
she thinks Darwinism and the protoplasm dangerous 
innovations, and the doctrine of Free Love with Mrs. 
Cady Stanton's development is something too shocking 
for her to talk about; she lifts her calm, clear eyes in 
wonder at the wild proceedings of the shrieking sister- 
hood, and cannot for the life of her make out what all 
this tumult means, and what the women want. For 
herself she has no doubts whatever, no moral uncertain- 
ties. The path of duty is as plain to her as the words of 
the Bible, and she loves her husband too well to wish to 
be his rival or to desire an individualized existence. 
She is his wife, she says ; and that seems more satisfac- 
tory to her than to be herself a somebody in the full 
light of notoriety, with him in the shade as her append- 
age. If she is inclined to be intolerant to any one, it is 
to those who seek to disturb the existing state of things, 
or whose speculations unsettle men's minds — those who, 
as she thinks, entangle the sense of that which is clear 
and straightforward enough if they would but leave it 
alone, and by their love of iconoclasm run the risk of 
destroying more than idols. But she is intolerant only 
because she believes that when men put forth false doc- 
trines they put them forth for a bad purpose and to do 
intentional mischief. Had she not this simple faith, 
which no philosophic questionings have either enlarged 



272 GREAT GIRLS. 

or disturbed, she would not be the great girl that she is ; 
and what she would have gained in catholicity she 
would have lost in freshness. For herself she has no 
self-asserting power, and would shrink from any kind 
of public action ; but she likes to visit the poor, and is 
sedulous in the matter of tracts and flannel petticoats, 
vexing the souls of the sterner, if wiser, guardians and 
magistrates by her generosity, which they affirm only 
encourages idleness and creates pauperism. She cannot 
see it in that light. Charity is one of the cardinal vir- 
tues of Christianity, and accordingly charitable she will 
be in spite of all that political economy may say. 

She belongs to her family — they do not belong to her ; 
and you seldom hear her say " I went " or " I did," it is 
always " we ;" which, though a small point, is a signif- 
icant one, showing how little she holds to anything like 
an* isolated individuality, and how entirely she feels a 
woman's life to belong to, and be bound up in, her home 
relations. She is romantic, too, and has her dreams and 
memories of early days, when her eyes grow moist as 
she looks at her husband, the first and only man she ever 
loved, and the past seems to be only part of the present. 
The experience which she must needs have had serves 
only to make her more gentle, more pitiful, than the or- 
dinary girl, who is naturally inclined to be a little hard; 
and of all her household, she is the kindest and the most 
intrinsically sympathetic. She keeps up her youth for 
the children's sake, she says, and they love her more like 
an elder sister than the traditional mother. They never 
think of her as old, for she is their constant companion 
and can do all that they do. She is fond of exercise, is 
a good walker, an active climber, a bold horsewoman, 
and a great promoter of picnics and open-air amusements. 
She looks almost as young as her youngest daughter in a 



GREAT GIRLS. 273 

cap and with covered shoulders, and her sons have a cer- 
tain playfulness in their pride and love for her which 
makes them more her brothers than her sons. Some of 
them are elderly men before she has ceased to be a great 
girl ; for she keeps her youth to the last by virtue of a 
clear conscience, a pure mind, and a loving nature. She 
is wise, too, in her generation, and takes care of her health 
by means of active habits, fresh air, cold water, and a 
sparing use of medicines and stimulants; and if this 
dear soul is proud of anything, it is of her fine figure, 
which she keeps trim and elastic to the last, and of the 
clearness of her skin, which no heated rooms have sod- 
dened, no accustomed strong waters have rendered 
clouded or bloated, 




PRETTY WOMEN 




FTER all, is the world so very absurd in its love 
of pretty women ? Is woman so very ridiculous 
£JL\ % in her chase after beauty? A pretty woman is 
doing woman's work in the world, not making 
speeches nor making pudding, but making life 
sunnier and more beautiful. Man has forsworn beauty 
altogether. It is hopeless to recall the Periclean idea of 
manhood, to insist on the development of personal beauty 
as not less manly than that of personal virtue, to demand 
the grace of Canning from our statesmen or the dignity 
of Robertson from our divines. The world of action is a 
world of ugliness, and the good-looking fellow who starts 
for the prize soon discovers what Madame de Girardin 
calls le malheur dfttre beau. He is guessed to be frivolous, 
he is assumed to be poetic ; there are whispers that his 
morals are no better than they should be. In a society 
resolute to be ugly, there is no post for an Adonis but 
that of a model or guardsman. 

But woman does for mankind what man has ceased to 
do. She clings to the Periclean ideal. Her aim from 
very childhood is to be beautiful. Even as a school-girl 
she notes the progress of her charms, the deepening color 
of her hair, the growing symmetry of her arm, the ripen- 

274 



PRETTY WOMEN. 275 

ing contour .of her cheek. We watch with a silent in- 
terest the mysterious reveries of the maiden; she is 
dreaming of a coming beauty and panting for the glories 
of eighteen. Insensibly she becomes an artist, her room 
a studio, her glass an academy. The hours work with 
her, but she works with the hours. What silent musings 
before her mirror, what dreams, what discoveries, what 
disappointments,, what careful gleaming of experience, 
what sudden flashes of invention ! The joy of her toilet 
is the joy of Raffaele over his canvas, of Michael Angelo 
before his marble. She is creating beauty in the silence 
and the loneliness of her chamber; she grows like any 
great art creation, the result of patience, of hope, of a 
thousand delicate touchings and retouchings. But even 
to the Gioconda, the moment of perfectness, of comple- 
tion, comes at last ; the master takes his work from the 
easel and gives it to the age. 

Woman is never perfect, never complete. A restless 
night undoes the beauty of the day ; sunshine blurs the 
evanescent coloring of her cheeks ; frost nips the tender 
outlines of her face into sudden harshness. Her pencil 
has ever to be at work even while the hours work for her, 
and the hours work against her at last. Care plows its 
lines across her brow; motherhood destroys the elastic 
lightness of her form. The bloom of her cheek, the 
quick flash of her eye, fade and vanish as the years go 
by. But woman is still true to her ideal. She won't 
know when she is beaten, and she manages to steal fresh 
victories even in her defeat. She invents new concep- 
tions of womanly grace ; she rallies at thirty, and fronts 
us with the beauty of womanhood; she makes a last 
stand at sixty with the beauty of age. It is the same 
great artist who exhibits, year after year, but whose style 
ranges from the girlish innocence of a Fra Angelico to 



276 pretty wo::en. 

the severer matronage of a Zurbaran. She falls, like 
Caesar, wrapping her mantle around her — " Buried in 
woollen ! 't would a saint provoke !" Death listens piti- 
fully to the longings of a lifetime, and the wrinkled face 
smiles back its last cold smile with something of the 
prettiness of eighteen. 

Perhaps we enjoy beauty less than we might from the 
absurd connection which men have established between 
the enjoyment of it and love. We fancy it impossible 
to care much about a pretty face unless we can hang it 
in our own gallery. " What care I how fair she be, so 
she is not fair to me !" It is, perhaps, true to say that 
nine-tenths of our enjoyment of beauty disappears with 
possession. The lover dwells on his mistress's face till 
he loses all sense of the world of beauty without it. He 
is like the connoisseur who so dotes on the little Correggio 
he has picked up for a song, that he ceases to care for 
the larger range of art. The real way of enjoying pretty 
women would be never to fall in love with a pretty 
woman at all. The true joys of life are its unconscious 
joys, the pleasure we derive from the laughter of chil- 
dren, from the landscape that we drive dreamily through, 
from the music we have not listened to. And so the 
truest enjoyment of beauty lies not in the observation 
or analysis of this face or that, but in the sense of pretty 
forms and pretty faces about one. The joy of variety, 
the pleasure of the inexhaustible range of the beautiful, 
comes to the admirer of pretty women, never to the lover 
of pretty women. We are not quarreling with the in- 
stinct which leads us through pretty faces into the paths 
of domestic peace. It is often necessary to restrict one's 
sphere of enjo} T ment; and if one is absolutely obliged 
to marry, one had far better marry a pretty wife than an 
ugly one. The refinement which the student of art 



PRETTY WOMEN. 277 

gains from constant contact with beauty of color and 
form, every one gains in some degree from daily contact 
with the beautiful in flesh and blood. 

Woman is the art of home, the Giorgione whose bril- 
liancy flashes through the quiet parsonage, the Perugino 
whose grace tempers the roughness of every day, the 
Rubens whose largeness and abundance fling a glow of 
comfort and ease over the most ungenial career. Life 
becomes more harmonious, it beats with a keener pulse 
of enjoyment, in the presence of pretty women. After 
all, a charming little figure, a piquant little face, is the 
best remedy for half the ills of existence, its worries, its 
vexations, its dullness, its disappointments. And even 
in the larger and more placid tj^pes of beaut}', in the 
beauty of a Lady Dumbello, if there is a tinge of stupid- 
ity, there is, at any rate, an atmosphere of repose, a 
genial influence moulding our social converse and habits 
into gentler shapes. It is amusing to see how the pretti- 
ness of woman tells on her dress, how the order and 
propriety of her dress tell on the home. The pursuit 
of beauty, the habit of prettiness, gives an ideal dignity 
to the very arrangement of her bonnet-strings. In every 
movement, in the very sweep of her ample folds, in the 
pose of her languor, in the gay start of her excitement, 
one feels the softening, harmonizing influence of her last 
look in the glass. She may be gay or sorrowful, or quiet 
or energetic, but she must be pretty. Beauty exercises 
an imperceptible compulsion over her, which moulds 
her whole life into graceful and harmonious forms. Her 
dress rises out of the mere clothing of man into regions 
of science, of poetry, and of art. A thousand consider- 
ations of taste, harmonies of color, contrasts, correspond- 
encies, delicate adjustments of light and shade, dictate 
the choice of a shawl or the tint of a glove. And as 

24 



278 PRETTY WOMEN. 

prettiness tells on dress, it tells on the home. Flowers, 
pictures, the gay notes of a sonata, the cosiest of couches, 
gorgeous hues of Indian tapestry, glasswork of Murano, 
a hundred exquisite somethings and nothings, are the 
natural setting of pretty women. 

The art of the boudoir tells on all but the chaos of 
the husband's study. Around that last refuge of bar- 
barism floats, an atmosphere of taste and refinement in 
which the pretty little wife lives and moves and has her 
being. And from this tone of the home grows the tone 
of society, the social laws of good-humor, of propriety, 
of self-restraint, of consideration for others, of gentle- 
ness, of vivacity. The very hush of the rough tones 
that have thundered over Peloponnese as Pericles bends 
over Aspasia, the little turns and delicacies of phrase, 
the joyous serfdoms and idlenesses of the manliest and 
most energetic of men, tell of the triumphs of pretty 
women. 

It is a triumph purchased, like most triumphs, not 
without loss to the conqueror. There is a malheur d'etre 
belle as well as a bonheur. Life, if it gains in delicacy, 
loses something in breadth and vigor from its very con- 
centration. There is something terribly monotonous in 
the life of the pretty woman, in the daily battle with 
ennui and boredom. One ounce of real love would out- 
weigh papa's pettings in childhood, or mamma's fuss 
about her child's coming out. There are jealousies of 
the school-room and jealousies of the ball-room, little 
envies, little spites that line with thorns a path which 
seems strewn with roses. Then there is the plague of 
fops, the eternal circle of vapid admirers, the eternal 
drivel of men about town. The prettiest lips have 
pouted sometimes with a longing for the ugliness which 
secures their sisters a chat with a man of sense. The 



PRETTY WOMEN. 279 

prettiest bosom has heaved a little rebelliously at the 
destiny that consigns it to the stupidest of wealthy fools. 
Perhaps it might have been better to have been a little 
less charming and to have married that amusing young 
hopeful with an income of a few hundreds a year. 

Sometimes, too, a pretty woman will sigh a little over 
the infinite littleness of her life, will long for some wider 
world of politics and effort from which her very pretti- 
ness and its train of results shuts her out. Marriage is 
a mere catastrophe, poisoning her existence, restricting 
her to a single adorer in the place of a thousand. Then, 
too, the single adorer is so hard to keep and the thousand 
are so easy to gain; and so begins the strife between 
pleasure and duty, the little warfare fought out under 
the watchful eyes of tattling dowagers and impertinent 
fribbles. And then comes the inevitable decay. It is 
easy to turn from the glass, but it is impossible to turn 
from the eyes that surround one, and every eye becomes 
a mirror in which the pretty woman reads the wreck of 
her charms. Younger rivals pass her by, the circle of 
adorers thins to a few bores and old beaux, men treat 
her to second-rate stories, or talk with their eyes fixed 
on another corner of the room. There is a shade of 
impertinence in the address of the young gentlemen; 
wall-flowers claim her for their own. She has lived for 
a year or so, and her whole existence is a mere looking 
back to that year of her life. Or it may be that her 
prettiness simply passes on from phase to phase, but 
even the prettiness of thirty-five, fascinating as it often 
is, seldom fascinates its possessor. She conquers new 
realms, but she fails to reconquer the old. She brings 
gushing undergraduates to her feet ; her desk is stuffed 
with lyrics of unwhiskered Strephons, but there is a ter- 
rible irony about it all, and she turns with a sense of the 



280 PRETTY WOMEN. 

ridiculous from their sighs and protestations. She is 
beaten, and she knows it. Strephon has done enough, 
if he has served to cover her retreat. 

Perhaps the one later prettiness that a woman feels to 
have real power, more real, perhaps, than the prettiness 
of youth, is the prettiness of old age. There is the 
charm of life's afterglow over the gray, quiet head ; the 
pale, tender face, lit up with a sweetness, a pitifulness 
that only experience and sorrow ever give. It is there, 
somehow, that we bring our troubles and find peace. It 
is there, at any rate, that we read a subtler and diviner 
beauty than in the rosy cheek of girlhood, a beauty 
spiritualized, mobile with every thought and emotion, 
yet restful with the rest of years. An infinite tenderness 
and largeness of heart, dignity whose grace and natural- 
ness rob it of all sense of restraint, a touch that has in 
it all the gentleness of earth, a smile that has in it some- 
thing of the compassionateness of heaven, — this is the 
apotheosis of Pretty Women. 




MEN'S FAVORITES. 



fE often hear women speak with a certain curious 
disdain of one of themselves as a gentlemen's 
favorite; generally adding that gentlemen's favor- 
ites are never liked by their own sex, and giving 
you to understand that they are minxes rather 
than otherwise, and objectionable in proportion to their 
attractiveness. They never can understand why they 
should be so attractive, they say ; and hold it as one of 
the unfathomable mysteries of men's bad taste — the 
girls to whom no man addresses half a dozen words in 
the course of the evening being far prettier and nicer 
than the favorite with whom everybody is talking, and 
for whom all are contending. Yet see how utterly they 
are neglected, while she is surrounded with admirers. 
But then she is an artful little flirt, they say, who lays 
herself out to attract, while the others are content to 
stay quietly in the shade until they are sought. And 
they speak as if to attract men's admiration was a sin, 
and not one of the final causes of woman as well as one 
of her chief social duties. 

There is always war between the women who are gen- 
tlemen's favorites and those who are not ; and if the 
last dislike the first, the first despise the last, and go out 
of their way to provoke them ; a thing not difficult to 

24* 281 



282 MEN'S FAVORITES. 

do when a woman gives her mind to it. A gentlemen's 
favorite is generally attacked on the score of her moral- 
ity, not to speak of her manners, which are pronounced 
as bad as can be ; while, how pretty soever men may 
think her, her own sex decry her, and pick her to pieces 
with such effect that they do not leave her a single 
charm. She is assumed to be incapable of anything 
like real earnestness of feeling, of anything like true 
womanliness; to be ignorant of the higher rules of 
modesty, to be fast or sly, according to her specialty of 
style ; and if you listen to her dissector you will find in 
time that she has every fault incidental to a frail human- 
ity, while her noblest virtue is in all probability a " kind 
of good nature " which does not count for much. In 
return, the favorite sneers at the wall-flower, whom she 
calls stupid and spiteful, and whom she rejoices to annoy 
by the excess of her popularity ; nothing pleasing her 
so much as to make herself look worse than she is- in the 
way of men's liking, except it be to carry off the one 
ewe lamb belonging to a wall-flower, and brand him ag 
of her own multitudinous herd. 

The quarrel is a deadly one as regards the combatants, 
but it has very little effect on the bystanders; for, not- 
withstanding the faults and frailties of which they hear 
so much, the men flock round the one and make her the 
public favorite of the set ; probably the prize match of 
the circle chooses a stupid wall-flower for life, and the 
favorite who has ridiculed the successful prizeholder 
scores of times, and who would give ten j^ears of her 
life to be in her place, has to swallow her confusion as 
she best can, and accept her discomfiture as if she liked 
it. If a favorite begins her career unmarried, she most 
frequently remains unmarried to the end, fulfilling her 
mission of charming all and fixing none till she comes 



MEN'S FAVORITES. 283 

to the age when her sex has no mission at all. If she 
is married she has probably developed after the event ; 
in her nonage having been a shy if observant wall-flower, 
quietly watching the methods which later she has so ably 
applied, and taking lessons from the very girls who 
queened it over her with an insolent supremacy which, 
more than all else, she noted, envied, and profited by. 
If she marries while a favorite and in the full swing of 
her triumphs, she probably gets pulled up by her hus- 
band (unless she is in India, or wherever else women are 
at a premium and mistresses of the situation), and sub- 
sides into the best and most domestic kind of u brooding 
hen." However that may be, marriage, which is the 
v great transforming agent of a woman's character, seldom 
leaves her in the same line as before, though sometimes 
of course the foolish virgin develops into the frisky mat- 
ron, and the girl who begins life as a gentlemen's favor- 
ite ends it as a mature siren. 

There are two kinds of gentlemen's favorites — the 
bright women who amuse them, and the sympathetic 
ones who love them. But these last are of a doubtful — 
what country people call " chancey " — kind ; women who 
show their feelings too openly, who fall in love too seri- 
ously, or perhaps unasked altogether, being more likely 
to irritate and disgust than to charm. But the bright, 
animated women who know how to talk and do not 
preach, who say innocent things in an audacious way 
and audacious things in an innocent way, who are clever 
without pedantry, frank without impudence, quick to 
follow a lead when shown them, and who know the dif- 
ference between badinage and earnestness, flirting and 
serious intentions, — these are the women liked by men, 
and whose social success in no wise depends on their 
beauty. 



284 MEN'S FAVORITES. 

Of one thing the clever woman who wants to be a gen- 
tlemen's favorite must always be careful — to keep that 
half step in the rear which alone reconciles men to her 
superiority of wit. She must not shine so much of her 
own light as by contact with theirs ; and her most bril- 
liant sallies ought to conve^y the impression of being 
struck out by them rather than of being elaborated by 
herself alone ; suggested by what had gone before, if im- 
proved on for their advantage. Else she offends the 
masculine self-love, never slow to take fire, and gains an 
element of hardness and self-assertion incompatible with 
her character of favorite. Not that men dislike all kinds 
of self-assertion. The irrepressible little woman with her 
trim waist and jaunty air, pert, pretty, defiant, who 
laughs in the face of the burly policeman who could 
crush her between his finger and thumb, and to whom 
ropes and barriers are things to be skipped over or dived 
under, as the case may be — she who is all flounces and 
self-assertion like a little bantam — is also most frequently 
a gentlemen's favorite, and encouraged in her saucy for- 
wardness. 

Then there is the graceful, fragile, swan-necked woman, 
who a century ago would be one of the Delia Cruscan 
school, all poetry and music and fine feelings, and of a 
delicacy so refined that nature would have had to be 
veiled and toned down to the subdued key proper for 
the graceful creature to accept. Nowadays she plunges 
boldly into the midst of the most tremendous realism, is 
an ardent advocate for woman's rights, and perhaps goes 
out " on the rampage," on platforms and the like, to ad- 
vocate doctrines as little in harmony with the kind of 
being she is as would be a diet of horseflesh and brandy. 
But she gets her following ; and men who do not agree 
with her delight to set her off on her favorite topics, just 



MEN'S FAVORITES. 285 

as women like to see their little girls play with their dolls 
and repeat to the harmless dummy the experiences which 
have been real to themselves. These two classes of self- 
assertion are mere plays which amuse men ; but when it 
comes to a reality, and is no longer a play — when a man 
is made to feel small, useless, insignificant by the side 
of a woman — he meets then with something he neither 
likes nor easily forgives; and if such a woman had the 
beauty of Venus, she would not be a gentlemen's favorite 
of the right sort, though some of course would admire 
her immensely, and do their best to spoil and make a 
fool of her. 

A gentlemen's favorite of the right sort must, among 
other things, be well up in the accidence of flirting, and 
know how to take it at exactly its proper value. She 
must be able to accept broad compliments, or more sub- 
tle love-making, without either too serious an acceptance 
or too grave a depreciation. This is a great art, and one 
that, more than any other, puts men at their ease, and 
sets the machinery of pleasant intercourse in harmonious 
action. Never to show whether she is really hit or not; 
never to give a fop occasion for a boast, or an enemy 
room for a pitying sneer; to take everything in good 
part, and to be as quick in giving as in receiving ; to be 
never off her. guard, never to throw away her arms, and 
to conceal any number of foxes that may be gnawing at 
her beneath her cloak — this kind of flirting, in which 
most gentlemen's favorites are adepts, is an art that reaches 
almost the dimensions of a science. And it is just that 
in which your very intense, your very earnest and sincere, 
women are utter failures. They know nothing of bad- 
inage, but take everything au grand serieux; and when you 
mean to be simply playful and complimentary, imagine 
you in tragic earnest, and think themselves obliged to 



286 MEN'S FAVORITES. 

frown down a compliment as a liberty, or else they ac- 
cept it with a passionate pleasure that shows how deeply 
it has struck. These intense and very sincere women 
are not as a rule gentlemen's favorites, unless they have 
other qualities of such a pleasant and bewitching kind as 
to excuse the enormous blunder the) 7 make of wearing 
their hearts on their sleeves for drawing-room daws to 
peck at, and the still greater blunder of confounding 
love-making with love. They may be, and if they have 
nice manners and are good-tempered they probably are, 
of the race of popular women ; that is, liked by both 
men and women ; but they are not gentlemen's favorites 
par excellence, who moreover are not liked by women at 
all. 

Women are quite right in one thing, hard as it 
seems to say it. Gentlemen's favorites, whom women 
dislike and distrust, are not usually good for much 
morally. They are often false and insincere, superficial, 
and possibly with a very low aim in life. And the men 
know all this, but forgive it for the sake of the pleasant- 
ness which is the grace and charm that shadows, or 
rather brightens, all the rest; having oftentimes indeed 
a half-contemptuous tolerance of their sins, as not ex- 
pecting anything better from them. Grant that they 
are false, that they sail perilously near the wind, are 
fickle and untrustworthy, what of that ? They are not. 
favorites because of their good qualities, only because of 
their pleasant ones — that subtle je ne sais quoi of old 
writers which stands one in such good stead when one 
is at a loss for an analysis, and which is the only term 
that expresses the strong yet indefinite charm which 
certain women possess for men. It is not beauty ; it is 
not necessarily cleverness taken in the. sense of educa- 
tion, though it must be a keenness if not depth of in- 



MEN'S FAVORITES. 287 

tellect, and smartness if not the power of reasoning ; it 
certainly is not goodness ; it is not always youth, nor 
yet warmth of feeling — though all these things come in 
as characteristics in their turn ; but it is companionship 
and the power of amusing. 

Still,what is it that creates this power, this companion- 
ship ? A smart, pert, flippant little minx, as women call 
her, with a shrill voice and a saucy air, may be the gen- 
tlemen's favorite of one set; a refined, graceful woman, 
speaking softly, and with pleading eyes, may be the fa- 
vorite of another ; a third may be a blunt, off-handed 
young person, given to speaking her mind so that there 
shall be no mistake ; a fourth may be a silent and seem- 
ingly a shy woman, fond of sitting out in retired places, 
and with a reputation for flirting of a quiet kind that 
sets the women's fingers tingling. There is no settled 
rule anyhow, and all kinds have their special sphere of 
shining, according to circumstances. But whatever they 
may be, they are useful in their generation and valuable 
for such work as they have to do. Society is a miser- 
ably dull affair to men where there are no favorites of 
any sort ; where the womanhood in the room is of the 
kind that herds together as if for protection, and looks 
askance over its shoulder at the wolves who prowl about 
the sheepfold of crinoline, in coats and beards; where 
conversation is monosyllabic in form, and restricted in 
substance ; where pleasant men who talk are considered 
dangerous, and fascinating women who answer immoral; 
where the matrons are grim, and the maidens still in the 
bread-and-butter stage of existence; and where young 
wives take matrimonial fidelity to mean making them- 
selves disagreeable to every man but their husband, on 
the plea that one never knows what may happen, and 
that you cannot go on with what you never begin. 



LITTLE WOMEN. 




HE conventional idea of a brave, an energetic, or 
a supremely criminal woman is a tall, dark- 
haired, large-armed virago, who might pass as 
the younger brother of her husband, and about 
whom nature seemed to have hesitated before 
determining whether to make her a man or a woman — 
a kind of debatable land, in fact, between the two sexes, 
and almost as much one as the other. Helen Macgregor, 
Lady Macbeth, Catherine de' Medici, Mrs. Manning, and 
the old-fashioned murderesses in novels, are all of the 
muscular, black-brigand type, with more, or less of regal 
grace superadded according to circumstances; and it 
would be thought nothing but a puerile fancy to sup- 
pose the contrary of those whose personal description 
is not already known. Crime, indeed, especially in art 
and fiction, has generally been painted in very nice pro- 
portion to the number of cubic inches embodied, and 
the depth of color employed ; though we are bound to 
add that the public favor runs toward muscular heroines 
almost as much as toward muscular murderesses, which 
to a certain extent redresses the overweighted balance. 

Our later novelists, however, have altered the whole 
setting of the palette. Instead of five feet ten of black 

288 



LITTLE WOMEN. 289 

and brown, they have gone in for four feet nothing of 
pink and yellow ; instead of tumbled masses of raven 
hair, they having shining coils of purest gold ; instead 
of hollow caverns whence flash unfathomable eyes elo- 
quent of every damnable passion, they have limpid lakes 
of heavenly blue ; and their worst sinners are in all re- 
spects fashioned as much after the outward semblance 
of the ideal saint as can well be managed. The original 
notion was not a very good one, and the revolution did not 
come before it was wanted ; but it has been a little over- 
done of late, and we are threatened with as great a sur- 
feit of small-limbed, yellow-headed criminals as we have 
had of the man-like black. One gets weary of the most 
perfect model in time, if too constantly repeated; as 
now, when we have all begun to feel that the resources 
of the angel's face and demon's soul have been more 
heavily drawn on than is quite fair, and that, given 
" heavy braids of golden hair," " bewildering blue eyes," 
" a small lithe frame," " a special delicacy of feet and 
hands," and we are booked for the companionship, 
through three volumes, of a young person to whom 
Messalina or Lucretia Borgia would be a mere novice. 

And yet there is a physiological truth in this associ- 
ation of energy with smallness ; perhaps, also, with a 
certain tint of yellow hair, which, with a dash of red 
through it, is decidedly suggestive of nervous force. 
Suggestiveness, indeed, does not go very far in an argu- 
ment; but the frequent connection of energy and small- 
ness in women is a thing which all may verify in their 
own circles. In daily life, who is the really formidable 
woman to encounter? — the black-browed, broad-shoul- 
dered giantess, with arms almost as big in the girth as a 
man's? or the pert, smart, trim little female, with no 
more biceps than a ladybird, and of just about equal 

25 T 



290 LITTLE WOMEN. 

strength with a sparrow? Nine times out often, the 
giantess with the heavy shoulders and hroad olack eye- 
brows is a timid, feeble-minded, good-tempered person, 
incapable of anything harsher than a mild remonstrance 
with her maid, or a gentle chastisement of her children. 
Nine times out of ten her husband has her In hand in 
the most perfect working order, so that she would swear 
the moon shone at midday if it were his pleasure that 
she should make a fool of herself in that direction. One 
of the most obedient and indolent of earth's daughters, 
she gives no trouble to any one, save the trouble of rous- 
ing, exciting, and setting her agoing; while, as for the 
conception or execution of any naughty piece of e elf- 
assertion, she is as utterly incapable as if she were a child 
unborn, and demands nothing better than to feel the 
pressure of the leading-strings, and to know exactly 
by their, strain where she is desired to go and what to 
do. 

But the little woman is irrepressible. Too fragile to 
come into the fighting section of humanity, a puny crea- 
ture whom one blow from a man's huge fist could anni- 
hilate, absolutely fearless, and insolent with the insolence 
which only those dare show who know that retnbution 
cannot follow, — what can be done with her? She is 
afraid of nothing, and to be controlled by no one. Shel- 
tered behind her weakness as behind a triple shield of 
brass, the angriest man dare not touch her, while she 
provokes him to a combat in which his hands are tied. 
She gets her own way in everything, and everywhere. 
At home and abroad she is equally dominant and irre- 
pressible, equally free from obedience and from fear. 
Who breaks all the public orders in sights and shows, 
and, in spite of king, kaiser, or Policeman X, goes where 
it is expressly forbidden that she shall go ? Not the 



LITTLE WOMEN. 291 

large-boned, muscular woman, whatever her tempera- 
ment; unless, indeed, of the exceptionally haughty type 
in distinctly inferior surroundings, and then she can 
queen it royally enough, and set everything at most 
lordly defiance. But in general the large-boned woman 
obeys the orders given, because, while near enough to 
man to be somewhat on a par with him, she is still un- 
deniably his inferior. She is too strong to shelter herself 
behind her weakness, yet too weak to assert her strength 
and defy her master on equal grounds. She is like a 
flying-fish, not one thing wholly ; and while capable of 
the inconveniences of two lives, is incapable of the priv- 
ileges of either. 

It is not she, for all her well-developed frame and for- 
midable looks,. but the little woman, who breaks the 
whole code of laws and defies all their defenders — the 
pert, smart, pretty little woman, who laughs in your 
face, and goes straight ahead if you try to turn her to 
the right hand or to the left, receiving your remon- 
strances with the most sublime indifference, as if you 
were talking a foreign language she could not under- 
stand. She carries everything before her, wherever she 
is. You may see her stepping over barriers, slipping 
under ropes, penetrating to the green benches with a red 
ticket, taking the best places on the platform over the 
heads of their rightful owners, settling herself among 
the reserved seats without an inch of paste-board to float 
her. You cannot turn her out by main force. Genuine 
chivalry objects to the public laying on of hands in the 
case of a woman, even when most recalcitrant and dis- 
obedient; more particularly if a small and fragile-looking 
woman. So that, if it is only a usurpation of places es- 
pecially masculine, she is allowed to retain what she has 
got amid the grave looks of the elders — not really dis- 



292 LITTLE WOMEN. 

pleased though at a flutter of her ribbons among them — 
and the titters and nudges of the young fellows. 

If the battle is between her and another woman, they 
are left to fight it out as they best can, with the odd-s 
laid heavily on the little one. All this time there is 
nothing of the tumult of contest about her. Fiery and 
combative as she generally is, when breaking the law in 
public places she is the very soul of serene daring. She 
shows no heat, no passion, no turbulence; she leaves 
these as extra weapons of defence to women who are as- 
sailable. For herself she requires no such aids. She 
knows her capabilities and the line of attack that best 
suits her, and she knows, too, that the fewer points of 
contact she exposes the more likely she is to slip into 
victory ; the more she assumes, and the less she argues, 
the slighter the hold she gives her opponents. She is 
either perfectly good-humored or blankly innocent; she 
either smiles you into indulgence or wearies you into 
compliance by the sheer hopelessness of making any 
impression upon her. She may, indeed, if of the very 
vociferous and shrill-tongued kind, burst out into such a 
noisy demonstration that you are glad to escape from 
her, no matter what spoils you leave on her hands; just 
as a mastiff will slink away from a bantam hen all 
heckled feathers and screeching cackle, and tremendous 
assumption of doing something terrible if he does not 
look out. Any way the little woman is unconquerable ; 
and a tiny fragment of humanity at a public show, set- 
ting all rules and regulations at defiance, is only carrying 
out in the matter of benches the manner of life to which 
nature has dedicated her from the beginning. 

As a rule, the little woman is brave. When the lymph- 
atic giantess falls into a faint or goes off into hysterics, 
she storms or bustles about, or holds on like a game ter- 



LITTLE WOMEN. 293 

rier, according to the work on hand. She will fly at any 
man who annoys her, and bears herself as equal to the 
biggest and strongest fellow of her acquaintance. In 
general she does it ail by sheer pluck, and is not notori- 
ous for subtlety or craft. Had Delilah been a little wo- 
man she would never have taken the trouble to shear 
Samson's locks. She would have defied him with all his 
strength untouched on his head, and she would have 
overcome him too. Judith and Jael were both probably 
large women. The work they went about demanded a 
certain strength of muscle and toughness of sinew ; but 
who can say that Jezebel was not a small, freckled, au- 
burn-haired Lady Audley of her time, full of the con- 
centrated fire, the electric force, the passionate reckless- 
ness of her type ? Regan and Goneril might have been 
beautiful demons of the same pattern ; we have the ex- 
ample of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers as to what 
amount of spiritual deviltry can exist with the face and 
manner of an angel direct from heaven; and perhaps 
Cordelia was a tall dark-haired girl, with a pair of brown 
eyes, and a long nose sloping downward. 

Look at modern Jewesses, with their flashing Oriental 
orbs, their night-black tresses, and the dusk}' shadows 
of their olive-colored complexions ; as catalogued prop- 
erties according to the ideal, they would be placed in the 
list of the natural criminals and law-breakers, while in 
reality they are about as meek and docile a set of women 
as are to be found within the four seas. Pit a fiery little 
Welsh woman or a petulant Parisienne against the most 
regal and Junonic amongst them, and let them try con- 
clusions in courage, in energy, or in audacity ; the Israel- 
itish Juno will go down before either of the small Phil- 
istines, and the fallacy of weight and color in the gener- 
ation of power will be shown without the possibility of 

25* 



294 • LITTLE WOMEN. 

denial. Even in those old days of long ago, when hu- 
man characteristics were embodied and deified, we do 
not find that the white-armed, large-limbed Here, though 
queen by right of marriage, lorded it over her sister god- 
desses by any superior energy or force of nature. On 
the contrary, she was rather a heavy-going person, and, 
unless moved to anger by her husband's numerous infi- 
delities, took her Olympian life placidly enough, and 
once or twice got cheated in a way that did no great 
credit to her sagacity. A little French woman would 
have sailed around her easily ; and as it was, shrewish 
though she was in her speech when provoked, her hus- 
band not only deceived but chastised her, and reduced 
her to penitence and obedience as no little woman would 
have suffered herself to be reduced. 

There is one celebrated race of women who were prob- 
ably the powerfully-built, large-limbed creatures they 
are assumed to have been, and as brave and energetic as 
they were strong and big — the Norse women of the 
sagas, who, for good or evil, seem to have been a very in- 
fluential element in the old Northern life. Prophetesses, 
physicians, dreamers of dreams and the accredited inter- 
preters as well, endowed with magic powers, admitted 
to a share in the counsels of men, brave in war, active in 
peace, these fair-haired Scandinavian women were the fit 
comrades of their men, the fit wives and mothers of the 
Berserkers and the Vikings. They had no tame or easy 
life of it, if all we hear of them is true. To defend the 
farm and homestead during their husbands' absence, and 
to keep themselves intact against all bold rovers to whom 
the Tenth Commandment was an unknown law; to 
dazzle and bewilder by magic arts when they could not 
conquer by open strength ; to unite craft and courage, 
deception and daring, loyalty and independence, de- 



LITTLE WOMEN. 295 

manded no small amount of opposing qualities. But the 
Steingerdas and Gudrunas were generally equal to any 
emergency of fate or fortune, and slashed their way 
through the history of their time more after the manner 
of men than women ; supplementing their downright 
blows by side thrusts of craftier cleverness when they 
had to meet power with skill, and were fain to overthrow 
brutality by fraud. The Norse women were certainly as 
largely framed as they were mentally energetic, and as 
crafty as either ; but we know of no other women who 
unite the same characteristics, and are at once cunning, 
strong, brave, and true. 

On the whole, then, the little women have the best of 
it. More petted than their bigger sisters, and infinitely 
more powerful, they have their own way in part because 
it really does not seem worth while to contest a point 
with such little creatures. There is nothing that wounds 
a man's self-respect in any victory they may get or 
claim. Where there is absolute inequality of strength, 
there can be no humiliation in the self-imposed defeat 
of the stronger ; and as it is always more pleasant to 
have peace than war, and as big men for the most part 
rather like than not to put their necks under the tread 
of tiny feet, the little woman goes on her way triumphant 
to the end, breaking all the laws she does not like, and 
throwing down all the barriers that impede her pro- 
gress, perfectly irresistible and irrepressible in all cir- 
cumstances and under any condition. 



WIVES. 




(IKINGS are said to go b} r contraries. This is just 
one of those mischievous half-truths which cause 
a great deal of unhappiness. It is quite true that 
<P a man is often enamored of qualities diametri- 
cally opposite to his own. Familiarity with his 
own habits of thought and tones of feeling breeds a 
certain sort of contempt for himself. It is a relief to 
escape from the monotony of introspection. A charac- 
ter stamped w T ith none of the features of his own excites 
curiosit}^ and interest. It is like exchanging the weari- 
ness of a thrice-told tale for a fresh and piquant page in 
the book of human nature. Gushing school-girls, when 
they yield to this fascination, call it " meeting their fate." 
But the natural tendency to admire most in others the 
qualities wanting in one's self is too often pushed to a 
dangerous extreme. It is vaguely supposed by many that 
dissimilarity of character and taste must, as a matter of 
course, be the basis, or a necessary ingredient at least, 
of any enduring attachment. Misled by this delusion, 
they fling to the winds the only solid and reasonable 
guarantees of happiness, and quit firm ground to follow 
the treacherous guidance of a mere will of the wisp. 
A man cannot be guilty of a greater folly than that of 

296 



WIVES. 297 

seeking to find in the person of a friend a complete 
contrast to himself. And most of all is this true in the 
case of the highest form of friendship — marriage. 

Nothing leads to so many ill-assorted unions as a 
romantic admiration for qualities unlike one's own. It 
does not follow that the chances of happiness in con- 
jugal life are increased by the choice of a partner who 
is a mere echo of one's self. The wise course is to be 
guided in such a selection by the dictates of an en- 
lightened selfishness. Marriage ought to be not merely 
an accession of happiness, but an accession of moral 
strength, and the qualities which can impart this are 
the only ones which it is essential to secure in a life 
companion. The sympathy which he is conscious of 
wanting for the proper development of his powers, the 
endowments of heart or head which supplement or bal- 
ance his own deficiencies, — these are what a prudent man 
counts on finding in one who is to become, by a legal 
fiction, a part of himself. A melancholy temperament 
requires to be cheered and inspirited, a diffident nature 
to be encouraged, a reserved one to be drawn out, an im- 
petuous one to be soothed and checked. Viewed aright, 
marriage is the beginning of a curative process for these 
and many more flaws of idiosyncrasy. For all such the 
wife-cure is the best of all possible treatments. The 
question, then, for an intending husband is not what is 
the best sort of wife in the abstract, but what is the best 
wife for him individually, regard being had to the special 
requirements of his nature. Does he stand in need of a 
being to manage, assist or worship him ? Does he want 
a pushing, helpful or adoring wife? When this ill- 
important point is ascertained, a wise choice may be 
made. 

Wives may be divided into three great classes — the 



298 WIVES. 

wife dominant, the wife co-operative, and the slave wife. 
There are many varieties of the wife dominant. There 
is the common vixen or termagant, to begin with, such as 
was Xantippe or Sarah duchess of Marlborough. Happily 
for mankind, this species is limited to a small number by 
the comparative rarity of those physical endowments on 
which it relies. Next, there is the intellectually domi- 
nant species. A married woman of commanding intel- 
lect is apt to encroach on her husband's prerogative. 
If she is in the habit of writing mathematical or astro- 
nomical treatises, if she spends her days in reading 
papers at social-science meetings and giving evidence 
before committees of the House of Commons, she will 
inevitably gain the upper hand, unless her husband has 
the wit to beat her at her own weapons and save his 
authority by a timely pamphlet on the currency ques- 
tion or the quadrature of the circle. Thirdly, there is 
the wife who governs her husband by superior strength 
of will rather than superior powers of mind. A resolute 
woman is a dominant wife in the bud, but the arts by 
which her domination is established are as various as 
the natural ingenuity of the sex is infinite. Some wives 
find an efficacious instrument in the accurate knowledge 
which the unrestricted confidences of the matrimonial 
relations enable them to acquire of their husbands' raw 
points. It is possible to rule a man by constantly 
treading on his corns or probing his tender places, when 
by the hypothesis, as in the case of marriage, he cannot 
possibly escape. There are few who can boast of being 
wholly devoid of that shame which our lively neighbors 
rightly call " bad." They are so silly as to betray, on 
some pofnt or other, a morbid sensitiveness. They are 
ashamed, perhaps, of their profession or their proper 
relations or their own antecedents. The man who has 



WIVES. 299 

risen by trade would fain consign to oblivion his honor- 
able connection with the shop. Whatever be the beset- 
ting weakness or foible, a sharp -sighted wife instinct- 
ively grasps it, and erects, if she be so minded, a solid 
dominion thereupon. She makes her husband tractable 
by continually making him wince. Or she gains the 
ascendant by another method — that of calmly but sys- 
tematically depreciating all that he says or does. She 
makes him feel that he is a good sort of man in his way, 
but that his way is to be dull, commonplace and hum- 
drum. Don't let him attempt to attract observation — 
least of all, to be amusing or facetious in society. His 
jokes are sure to be pointless, his anecdotes twaddling, 
and both are received with an habitual air of pitying 
silence. 

If he ventures at an evening party to sing a ballad or 
take part in a charade, he reads a silent but expressive 
protest in the wife's eyes. He is made to feel, in short, 
that the thread of sufferance on which his social posi- 
tion depends is very slight, and may at any moment be 
snapped. Far different are the arts by which the nobler 
kind of dominant wives maintain their superiority. 
There is a wife who owes the moral ascendency which 
she possesses over her husband only to her own fine tact. 
She rules him by the exquisite skill with which she 
preserves his self-respect unimpaired. Her knowledge 
of his character she uses not for any selfish ends of her 
own, but with a single view to happiness. Not a day 
passes that she does not firmly but unobtrusively in- 
terpose to save him from some deed or word that might 
leave a sting of regret or tend to lower him in his own 
eyes or in the eyes of others. By her keen sense of the 
ridiculous she prevents his becoming the object of rid- 
icule, and by her womanly forethought a thousand petty 



300 WIVES. 

vexations are moved from his path. She scents instinct- 
ively the coming annoyance, and if she cannot parry 
the stroke she adroitly neutralizes its effect. In society, 
when the conversation drifts toward his crotchet, she 
gives it a dexterous turn and keeps it from trenching 
on dangerous ground. By a look or a smile of intelli- 
gence she allays the rising feeling of irritation when he 
hears a friend abused or himself flatly contradicted. 
There are few men who cannot be effectually managed 
by being constantly kept in good humor and inwardly 
satisfied with themselves. The gratitude which they 
feel toward a being at their side who prevents them every 
day from saying or doing silly things soon ripens into 
deference and submission. For the protection thus ac- 
quired they are even willing to abridge somewhat of 
their marital dignity, but this is a sacrifice which a dis- 
creet wife never calls on them to make. But power is 
not always employed wisely or well. There is a dom- 
inant wife who is actuated by less pure motives. The 
noble has often a counterpart in the base, and just as 
there is a wife who rules by means of an exquisite tact, 
sharpened by disinterested affection, so there is one who 
maintains her position by the weapon of petty intrigue 
alone. Perhaps there is no such field for sordid schem- 
ing as that which a second marriage presents to an un- 
principled woman. 

There are two kinds of co-operative wives. There is 
the wife who relieves her husband by taking on herself 
the exclusive responsibility for the household and its 
concerns ; and there is the wife who, treating domestic 
affairs as placed in commission, receives from her hus- 
band advice and help in regard to them, while she imparts 
to him in return advice and help in regard to his pro- 
fessional work or pursuits. The one bases her view of 



WIVES. 301 

her position on the principle of the division of labor, the 
other adopts a system of indefinite reciprocity. The one 
would localize such institutions as the kitchen, nursery 
and housekeeper's room, and would deal summarily and 
without appeal with the petty problems which contin- 
ually press for solution in one or other of those depart- 
ments. The other claims the right of referring in all 
such matters for instructions to the centre and fountain 
of domestic authority, while her husband in return may 
have recourse, as often as he finds convenient, for help 
to her. Both systems have their advantages and their 
evils. It is a reproduction in miniature of the contro- 
versy about the comparative merits of centralization 
and independent local institutions. The wife who eases 
her husband altogether from the teasing worries of the 
household, not only acquires by being thrown on her 
own resources an excellent habit of self-reliance, but 
leaves her fellow-worker free to pursue his loftier avoca- 
tions with more spirit and less interruption. A man can- 
not pass his life in an atmosphere of littleness without 
deterioration. Even a fine mind, when pinned to little 
things, becomes dwarfed and contracted ; and this result 
is to be apprehended when a husband has no larger in- 
terests than the minutiae of household management, or 
when these are continually forced upon his thoughts. 
A poet will soon lose his inspiration if his mind is con- 
tinually harassed with the weekly bills, and a public 
man will not take a larger and more statesmanlike view 
of the European situation for being perpetually invoked 
to arbitrate between squabbling housemaids. This, 
then, is the danger of importing into the matrimonial 
estate the system of unlimited mutual aid instead of a 
separate distribution of functions. Daily contact with 
the details of housekeeping is not good for a man. On 

26 



302 WIVES. 

the other hand, a wife, if she is clever, may give her hus- 
band valuable assistance in his own line of work. It 
is much better that she should help him so than that he 
should help her in the management of the house. 

There remains the slave wife. We call her so when 
all notion of conjugal duty is sunk in the one thought 
of how she may ingratiate herself with her husband. 
Practically, the woman who devotes herself to this ami- 
able endeavor never subsides into the position of a wife ; 
she is a lover all her life. She never lives down her first 
impressions of the partner of her choice. She never 
sees him. as he really is, but always bathed in the ro- 
seate hues of the days of courtship or with the halo of 
the honeymoon encircling his brow. Others may see 
in him nothing but common clay, but to her he is a 
divinity, to execute whose commands, to anticipate 
whose slightest wants, to bask in whose smile and to 
crouch at whose feet are her privilege and her pride. 
There is something almost touching in her restless anx- 
iety to please her lord, in the study of his favorite color, 
his favorite book, his favorite song, his favorite dish. 
Her toilette is regulated by a strict conformity to his 
canons of taste, and if he thinks her dress pretty she is 
in a nutter of delight. Many are the afternoon visits 
she pays with the mere view of picking up a little gos- 
sip to amuse him on his return at dinner. Her efforts to 
identify herself with his pursuits are incessant. It is 
hardly too much to say that she would willingly go 
through fire and water if she could enjoy his company 
in her passage through either of those elements. She 
will even go so far (such is woman's devotion) as to 
allow him to flirt with pretty young ladies, for fear the 
poor fellow should feel dull or moped, while she herself 
looks on at the proceedings with angelic placidity. 



WIVES. 303 

Habitual fractiousness is a decided drawback in the 
partner of one's joys, and flippancy or frivolity is not 
alwa} r s congenial ; but neither a fractious woman nor a 
flippant woman can do a husband any serious harm, 
though she may be exceedingly unpleasant at the time. 
It is different where he awakes to find himself married 
to his shadow — to a woman who may have been accom- 
plished and even slightly thoughtful, but who is so weakly 
endowed with individuality that before they have been 
married three months she has sunk into a mere echo of 
himself. Originally, perhaps, she was able to pronounce 
opinions worth listening to, and which he was glad to 
have, but all her powers have fled before his superiority, 
like a badly-fixed photograph before the sun. From 
being a stimulant she has degenerated into a sheer ab- 
sorbent. He married in the hopes of finding a sort of 
"guide, philosopher and friend," and discovers that 
after all he has only doubled himself. Once she might 
have been to him, in Mr. Tennyson's words, " as water 
is to wine," and the result of the combination bears a 
natural resemblance to their detestable compound — 
negus. 

A clever man, more than all others, requires a slight 
acidulous element in his companion. All clever men 
are more or less infected with vanity. It may be blat- 
ant and offensive, it may be excessive but .not unam us- 
ing, or it may show itself just as a fair soupgon, but it is 
never entirely absent, and needs to be counteracted by 
something much more potent than a hot and sugary in- 
tellect — negus. A clever husband, like the good despot, 
will be all the better for a little constitutional opposi- 
tion. If his most constant companion is ever flattering, 
ever kind, his natural share of self-love is sure to grow 
both unhealthily large in quantity and unworthily little 



304 WIVES. 

in quality. The light of domestic felicity would not 
probably be attained by a man whose wife could set 
him right in a Greek quotation or oppose his views 
about Hebrew points or thwart him in his theory of 
the origin of evil ; but still less w T here he is never treated 
to an occasional dose of wholesome and vigorous dissent, 
and is allowed to make assertions and advance opinions 
without fear of criticism or chance of opposition. Sol- 
itude tends to make a man think a great deal too highly 
of himself, but this quasi solitude is still worse, where he 
only sees his own mental shadow and hears his own 
mental echo. Of course, in many marriages the wife is 
no more a companion to her husband than his house- 
keeper or his cook ; and there may be no more genuine 
intercourse between them than is implied by two men 
going into partnership in business. In such cases men- 
tal quantities are not of much importance. A head 
equal to the arithmetic of weekly bills, and a heart that 
does not quail before the emergencies of the nursery, are 
amply sufficient to answer all purposes. But where a 
man makes a companion of his wife, the variety of 
woman that he selects palpably makes a great difference, 
not solely in external comfort, but in maintaining the 
vigor of his own character. 

Mr. Disraeli dedicated Sybil to "the most severe of 
critics, but — a perfect wife." Perhaps the "but" might 
be appropriately replaced by "because." At least, no 
wife is perfect who cannot be a severe critic upon occa- 
sion. To a very clever man perhaps it is the most con- 
siderable of her functions. If his cleverness lies in the 
regions of romance or poetry, and more especially if he 
loves to air it in public, it is difficult to conceive a more 
thoroughly useful domestic institution than a stern criti- 
cal wife. Hence it may be argued that the clever man 



WIVES. 305 

must pair off with the clever woman, for otherwise how 
should she be competent to criticise him ? Unless he 
selects somebody as good as himself, the only criticism 
he is likely to encounter will come in the form of Caudle 
lectures or Naggleton wrangles. But this is just the same 
sort of mistake as people make who sneer at journalists 
for reviewing books they could not write or commenting 
upon campaigns they could not have conducted. The 
fallacy has been so frequently refuted in the latter case 
that we need scarcely repeat the arguments against its 
employment in the former. A woman may be quite 
unable to originate, and yet very competent to pass an 
intelligent judgment upon what has been originated by 
somebody else in whom she is interested. However, it 
is obviously as impossible to generalize about the sort 
of women whom clever men would do well to marry as 
it would be to prescribe what kind of things clever men 
should eat for dinner. Some would be happiest with 
babies like poor Harriet Shelley, the chief source of whose 
nuptial joy was that " the house had such a nice garden 
for her and Percy to play in." Others like Madame du 
Chatelet or Mrs. Somerville, who could solve abstruse 
astronomical problems and write treatises on fluxions. 
Perhaps the majority of clever men are well contented 
with wives as like mothers as possible. But if it is im- 
possible to lay down any more definite rule, the clever 
man may at all events be warned to marry somebody 
else, and not himself in another form. 
26* U 



POOR MEN'S WIVES. 



E are not about to reopen either the economical 
question upon what amount of income a man 
may prudently marry, or the moral question how 
far, in such a matter, a man is justified in subor- 
dinating strict prudence to other considerations. 
It is enough for our present purpose if we may take it 
for granted that, in spite of all that has been said against 
matrimony when unsanctioned by the requisite amount 
of settled property, poor men are never likely to give up 
the practice altogether ; and this much of prediction we 
think we may venture to indulge in without laying any 
claim to second sight. After all, perhaps, the prospect 
is not so discouraging as some people would wish us to 
consider it. Men are determined to celibacy by common- 
place motives at least as often as by high ones; and 
though here and there, doubtless, an absorbing love for 
his profession and passionate desire to pursue it for its 
own sake may lead a lawyer or a physician to prefer a 
solitary home to the risk of feeling himself fettered by 
the consciousness of having others dependent on him, 
this disinterested love of law or medicine, apart from*the 
rewards they have to offer, can hardly be a very common 
sentiment. In the present condition of society, men are 
more likely to remain single from a certain indisposition 

306 



POOR MEN'S WIVES. 307 

to hard work, or from a preference of the superior com- 
fort to be gained from an income which is not called 
upon to carry double — both very good reasons in them- 
selves, but neither of them particularly elevating in 
their influence on the character. 

Indeed, the sense of a special vocation which the 
other view presupposes can exist only in an exceptional 
class of minds, and ought, one would think, to require 
some unusual feature in the employment which calls it 
forth. The celibacy of a missionary is intelligible and 
respectable ; but if a lawyer were to abjure matrimony 
merely to devote himself with more singleness of pur- 
pose to the practice of equity or convej^ancing, we sus- 
pect it would not be long before he learned to question 
the soundness of his decision. The argument drawn 
from the sacrifices which marrying a poor man are sup- 
posed to entail upon a woman has, it must be owned, a 
more serious look about it; but, after all, upon a matter 
of this kind, a woman must herself be the best judge, 
and so long as a lover takes care not to paint his pros- 
pects as any brighter than h*e may honestly hope to 
make them, it seems mere hyper-considerateness to 
make regard for a woman's happiness a reason for not 
giving her the option of being happy in her own way. 
And even the fear of possible inability to give the chil- 
dren of a marriage all the physical and mental advan- 
tages which may be desirable may be soothed by the 
reflection to how small an extent these things are a 
matter of calculation, and with how little certainty either 
health or intellectual culture is to be found in the highest 
perfection under the most favorable external circum- 
stances. The children of the middle and professional 
classes seem, for the most part, to do as well in both 
respects as the children of richer men. 



308 POOR MEN'S WIVES. 

Assuming, then, that poor men will go on marrying, 
and that the fact of their doing so is not the unmixed 
evil which it is sometimes represented, there arises a 
further inquiry : What kind of women will make them 
the best wives ? So far, indeed, as the particular act of 
choice is concerned, this is not a question of the smallest 
practical moment, since men rarely set themselves to 
pick out a wife on any fixed principle, and still more 
rarely persevere in the process if they have begun it. A 
man in love is no doubt convinced that there is one 
young lady in the world better suited than any of her 
sex to marry on the moderate income he happens to be 
possessed of, but it is only necessary that he should sud- 
denly grow richer or poorer for him to be convinced 
with equal certainty that she is better adapted than any 
woman in existence to adorn wealth or to make poverty 
endurable. And yet the question is of more importance 
than may appear, inasmuch as the theories which women 
have set before them on such a subject as this must to 
some extent color their own moral ideal, and thus exer- 
cise, more or less directly, an appreciable influence on 
their conduct. Even if a man does not make a girl an 
offer because he thinks she will make a good poor man's 
wife, it may nevertheless make a great difference in their 
subsequent happiness whether, in her endeavors to play 
that part properly, she is modeling herself after a right 
or a wrong pattern. 

Now, as to the popular view of the question, there is 
no doubt at all. It is based altogether upon considera- 
tions of economy— not in the sense of getting the largest 
return for a given outlay, but in the sense of reducing 
the outlay itself to the lowest possible point. According 
to this theory, therefore, the best wife for a poor man is 
the wife who will cost him least. To compass this para- 






POOR MEN'S WIVES. 309 

mount end, she must first of all minimize her own ex- 
penditure. She must lay out next to no money on her 
clothes; she must dress as economically — meaning 
thereby as cheaply — as possible ; and with this view she 
must discourage to the utmost of her power any weak 
disposition on the part of her husband toward liking 
to see her look her best. What spare time she has she 
should devote to the construction of the serviceable and 
unattractive garments which are all she will permit her- 
self to wear; but it may be doubted whether, if she 
comes up to the popular standard in other respects, she 
will have many vacant moments to consecrate to this 
useful employment. She will of course have her house 
to manage, and here an obvious source of saving will at 
once suggest itself. She must put up with inferior ser- 
vants, if any, and look to supplementing their deficien- 
cies by her personal efforts. In this way her mornings 
may be spent in the lighter kinds of housework, while 
the afternoon will have its appropriate occupation in 
correcting the inexperience of her cook. 

But it is in her maternal capacity that the ordinary 
theory makes the largest demands on the model wife. 
From the moment of her children's birth up to the time 
when a mother's watchfulness and influence begin to be 
of real importance, especially in the case of daughters, 
her attention to them must be unremitting. After that 
time has arrived, she will be allowed to relax her efforts 
without necessarily forgetting her reputation as an ad- 
mirable manager. The contrast may seem something 
of a paradox, but a moment's reflection will suggest an 
explanation. When children have passed beyond the 
nursery, the neglect of them need not necessitate any 
additional outlay ; but in the earlier years of their life, 
if the mother does not look after them herself, she must 



310 POOR MEN'S WIVES. 

pay a higher class of nurse to look after them in her 
stead. During that period, therefore, it is proper for her 
to give up all society, and to go out as little as possible ; 
indeed, except with her children, she need never leave 
the house at all, since her walks with them will be ex- 
ercise enough to keep her in health. Whether she is to 
spend any time in reading is a doubtful point ; but if 
she does, it must be strictly limited to the acquisition 
of useful elementary knowledge, with a view of dispens- 
ing with the services of a teacher or governess hereafter. 
But the chances are that her present duties in the nursery, 
the kitchen,, and the work-room will leave her little op- 
portunity for looking forward even to a time which is 
only a few years distant. 

Of course we shall be charged with having grossly 
overcolored this sketch, and we do not deny that it is in 
some respects an exaggeration. Still, it is. an exaggera- 
tion only so far as this — that it combines into one picture 
characteristics which are rarely found united in any sin- 
gle heroine. What we assert is that this is the standard 
to which, according to the theory we have been describ- 
ing, every woman who accepts the position of a poor 
man's wife should strive to come up, and which, if any 
woman were to attain, she would be regarded by many 
people as being marvelously and quite, exceptionally 
fitted for the life she had chosen. 

The fault of the theory is not far to seek. It omits 
the husband from the calculation altogether, and regards 
only his purse. In a certain sense, indeed, his interests 
are looked after, just as the interests of a minor may be 
looked after by a scrupulous guardian whose only object 
is to hand over the estate, when his ward comes of age, 
with all the rents that have fallen due during the mi- 
nority, accumulated with the utmost diligence and in- 



POOR MEN'S WIVES. 311 

vested to the best possible advantage. But in the mean 
time, what share has the husband enjoyed of the real 
happiness of married life ? He has Had his house ex- 
cellently kept, as it might have been if he bad been for- 
tunate enough to meet with an honest housekeeper. He 
has had his children admirably cared for, as they might 
have been if his wife had died and he had secured the 
services of a competent nurse. He has been saved a 
long array of dressmaker's bills, but the cost of that has 
been that he might almost as well have married a dress- 
maker. He has obtained all the advantages of matri- 
mony except the companionship which is usually, but 
as it appears wrongly, supposed to be the principal ob- 
ject for which men care to marry. The mistress of his 
house is at once a wife and no wife. She is the assist- 
ant of the nursemaid, the instructress of the cook, the 
rival of the milliner; how can she be expected to find 
time to be the companion of her husband ? Her days 
are taken up and her energies exhausted by the routine 
of her ordinary life. She has no interests beyond the 
range of her own household, and consequently she 
quickly loses the power of sympathizing with her hus- 
band in anything that attracts him outside that narrow 
circle. 

The defects and the remedy lie close together. The 
point at which the economical theory of marriage breaks 
down is the point at which a sounder theory of the rela- 
tionship will aim at first starting. Since the chief end 
of marriage is the mutual companionship of husband 
and wife, a wife's first object will be to make herself her 
husband's companion. And in the case of people who 
have married on a small income, this assertion is more 
fruitful in consequences than the reader may at once 
perceive. For, to begin with, they will be more com- 



312 POOR MEN'S WIVES. 

pletely thrown upon one another than people with large 
means. Society and the management of a fortune are 
in themselves educating influences. They supply ob- 
jects of interest which, according to the tastes of those 
who enjoy them, may either be shared between husband 
and wife or made to supply the place of that mutual in- 
tercourse which at the same time they make more agree- 
able when it is unavoidable. But where these are want- 
ing, it becomes of immense importance that the wife 
should enter into her husband's pursuits and recreations; 
and as, in the class of life with which we are dealing, 
these will probably be of a more or less intellectual type, 
the cultivation of her own mind becomes one of her 
first duties. In her position circumstance will not do 
this for her without any act of her own. She cannot 
rely on having a smattering, at least, of the subjects of 
the day brought within her reach by the mere succession 
of people who take her in to dinner ; she must trust to 
herself, instead of to the general stream of society, to 
bring the knowledge she wants to her feet. 

We do not mean that marriage is to make a woman a 
blue-stocking or a literary lady, or that a .wife is to forget 
that she is mistress of a household and the mother of 
children. All that is intended is that these duties should 
not push the primary obligation to her husband out of 
sight, nor lead her to imagine that this is adequately 
discharged by keeping down the weekly bills. And what 
has been said of the mind is, in this connection at least, 
as true of the body. All that external grace and finish 
the presence or absence of which makes so much real 
difference in the happiness of home life depends for its 
very existence on the wife ; and yet there are few temp- 
tations into which women seem to fall more readily than 
that of thinking about their appearance only on special 



POOR MEN'S WIVES. 313 

occasions, and' contracting careless and almost slovenly 
habits at all other times. In some positions of life the 
opportunities for yielding to this tendency are so re- 
stricted that the temptation ceases to be formidable from 
its very rarity. There is no fear of a woman forgetting 
to dress for dinner when she dines every day in com- 
pany, but she may easily fall out of the way of doing so 
from mere thoughtlessness when she has no one but 
herself to consult and no one but her husband to please. 
There is comparatively little harm in a woman being 
indifferent to the neatness of her clothes if she has only 
to buy others when those which she has are shabby; 
but when that enviable facility of replacing the offending 
garments is wanting, it becomes a matter of great mo- 
ment whether she has cultivated the gift of looking well 
at a small cost. The worst of it is that if she fails in 
either of these respects she will find plenty of people 
who will teach her to make a merit of so doing from 
their inveterate determination to confound economy 
with hugger-mugger. 

And then, to complete our list of neglected qualifica- 
tions, there is scarcely any requisite more important in 
the wife of a poor man than a sufficient capacity for 
enjoyment. If this has never been developed, she w T ill 
inevitably be exposed to one of two dangers. Either 
she will be hard to please, will care only for costly 
amusements, and so run the risk of becoming extrava- 
gant, or, more probably, she will forego her share of 
amusement altogether, and thus throw away her best 
chance of preserving her youth and freshness unim- 
paired. There are few better safeguards against these 
alternative evils than an appreciation of cheap pleasures. 
27 



WIDOWS. 




^"I^HE widow of the Wadman kind is one that has 
outlived her grief, and is not disinclined to a repe- 
tition of the matrimonial experiment if asked 
thereto by an experimenter after her own heart. 
But in a pretty, tender, womanly way ; if not 
quite so timidly as a girl, yet as becomingly in her de- 
gree, and with that peculiar fascination which nothing 
but the combination of experience and modesty can 
give it. She sits close, waiting to be found, and does 
not ramp and dash about like the hawk sisterhood; 
neither does she pretend that she is unwilling to be 
found, still less deny that a soft warm nest, well lined 
and snugly sheltered, is better than a lonely branch 
stretching out comfortless and bare into the bleak, wide 
world. She, too, is almost sure to get what she wants, 
with the advantage of being voluntarily chosen and not 
unwillingly submitted to. This is the kind of woman 
who is always mildly but thoroughly happy in her mar- 
ried life, unless, indeed, her husband should be a brute, 
which Heaven forefend ! She lives in peace and bland 
contentment while the Fates permit, and when he dies 
she buries him decently and laments him decorously ; 
but she thinks it folly to spend her life in weeping by 

314 



WIDOWS. 315 

the side of his cold grave, when her tears can do no good 
to either of them. Eather she thinks it a proof of her 
love for him, and the evidence of how true was her hap- 
piness, that she should elect to give him a successor. Her 
blessed experience in the past has made her trustful in 
the future ; and because she has found one man faithful 
she thinks that all are Abdiels. As a rule, this type of 
woman does find men pleasant, and by her own nature 
ensures domestic happiness. She is always tenderly 
and never passionately in love, even with the husband 
she has loved the best : she gives in to no excesses to the 
right or to the left : her temperament is of that serene 
moonlight kind which does not fatigue others nor wear 
out its possessor ; without ambition, or the power to fling 
herself into any absorbing occupation, she lives only to 
please and be pleased at home ; and if she is not a wife, 
wearing her light fetters lovingly and proud that she is 
fettered, she is nothing. As some women are born moth- 
ers and others are born nuns, so is the Wadman woman 
a born wife, and shines in no other character or capacity. 
But in this she excels ; and knowing this, she sticks to 
her role, how frequently so ever the interlocutor may be 
changed. 

There are widows, however, who have no thought or 
desire for remaining anything but widows — who have 
gained the worth of the world in their condition. " Jeune, 
riche, et veuve — quel bonheur !" says the French wife, 
eyeing " mon mari " askance. Can the most exacting 
woman ask for more? And truly such a one is in the 
most enviable position possible to a woman, supposing 
always that she has not lost in her husband the man she 
loved. If she has lost only the man who sat by right at 
the same hearth with herself — perhaps the man who 
quarreled with her across the ashes — she has lost her 



316 WIDOWS. 

burden and has gained her release. The cross of mat- 
rimony lies heavy on many a woman who never takes 
the world into her confidence, and who bears in absolute 
silence what she has not the power to cast from her. 
Perhaps her husband has been a man of note, a man of 
learning, of elevated station, a political or a philanthropic 
power. She alone knew the fretfulness, the petty tyran- 
ny, the miserable smallness at home, of the man of large 
repute whom his generation conspired to honor, and 
whose public life was a mark for the future to date by. 
When he died the press wrote his eulogy and his elegy : 
but his widow, when she put on her weeds, sang softly 
in her own heart a paean to the great king of freedom, 
and whispered to herself Laudamus ! with a sigh of un- 
utterable relief. To such a woman widowhood has no 
sentimental regrets. She has come into possession of 
the goods for which, perhaps, she sold herself: she is 
young enough yet to enjoy, to project a future ; she has 
the free choice of a maid and the free action of a matron, 
as no other woman has. She may be courted, and she 
need not be chaperoned, nor yet forced to accept. Ex- 
perience has mellowed and enriched her; for, though 
the asperities of her former condition were sharp while 
they lasted, they had not time permanently to roughen 
or embitter her. Then the sense of relief gladdens, 
while the sense of propriety subdues her; and the deli- 
cate mixture of outside melancholy tempered with inter- 
nal warmth is wonderfully enticing. Few men know 
how to resist that gentle sadness which does not preclude 
the sweetest sympathy with pleasures in which she may 
not join — with happiness which is, alas ! denied her. It 
gives an air of such profound unselfishness ! it asks so 
mutely, so bewitchingly, for consolation! 

Even a hard man is moved at the sight of a pretty 



WIDOWS. 317 

young widow in the funereal black of her first grief, sit- 
ting apart with a patient smile and eyes east meekly 
down as one not of the world, though in it. Her loss is 
too recent to admit of any thought of reparation ; and 
yet what man does not think of that time of reparation? 
and if she is more than usually charming in person and 
well dowered in purse, what man does not think of him- 
self as the best repairer she could take ? Then, as time 
goes on and she glides gracefully into the era of miti- 
gated grief, how beautiful is her whole manner ! how 
tasteful her attire ! The most exquisite colors of the 
rampant kind look garish beside her dainty tints, and 
the untempered mirth -of happy girls is coarse beside her 
faint, subdued admission of moral sunshine. Grays 
as tender as a dove's breast ; regal purples which have a 
glow behind their gloom ; stately silks of sombre black 
softly veiled by clouds of gauzy white, — all speak of 
passing time and the gradual blooming of the spring 
after the sadness of the winter ; all symbolize the flowers 
which are growing ever on the sod that covers the dear 
departed ; all hint at the melting of the funeral gloom 
into a possible bridal. She begins too to take pleasure 
in the old familiar things of life. She steals into a quiet 
back seat at the opera ; she just walks through a quad- 
rille ; she sees no harm in a fete or flower-show if prop- 
erly companioned. Winter does not last for ever, and a 
lifelong mourning is a wearisome prospect; so she goes 
through her degrees in accurate order, and comes out at 
the end radiant. For when the faint shadows cast by 
the era of mitigated grief fade away, she is the widow 
par excellence — the blooming widow, young, rich, gay and 
free, with the world on her side, her fortune in her hand 
and the ball at her foot. She is the freest woman alive — 
freer even than any old maid to be found. Freedom, in- 

27 * 



318 WIDOWS. 

deed, comes to the old maid when too late to enjoy it, 
at least in certain directions ; for while she is young she 
is necessarily in bondage, and when parents and guard- 
ians leave her at liberty the world and Mrs. Grundy take 
up the reins, and hold them pretty tight. 

But the widow is as thoroughly emancipated from the 
conventional bonds which confine the free action of a 
maid as she is from those which fetter the wife ; and 
only she herself knows what she has lost and gained. 
She bore her yoke well while it pressed on her. It 
galled her, but she did not wince ; only when it was re- 
moved did she become fully conscious of how great had 
been the burden, from her sense of infinite relief. The 
world never knew that she had passed under the harrow ; 
probably, therefore, it wonders at her cheerfulness with 
the dear departed scarce two years dead ; and some say 
how sweetly resigned she is, and others how unfeeling. 
She is neither. She is simply free after having lived in 
bondage, and she is glad in consequence. But she is 
dangerous. In fact, she is the most dangerous of all 
women to men's peace of mind. She does not want to 
marry again — does not mean to marry again for many 
years to come, if ever. Granted; but that does not say 
that she is indifferent to admiration or careless of men's 
society. And being without serious intentions herself, 
she does not reflect that she may possibly mislead and 
deceive others who have no such cause as she has for 
bewaring of the pleasant folly. In the exercise of her 
prerogative as a free woman, able to cultivate the dearest 
friendships with men, and fearlessly using her power, 
she entangles many a poor fellow's heart which she never 
wished to engage more than platonically, and crushes 
hopes which she had not the slightest intention to raise. 
Why cannot men be her friends ? she asks with a pretty, 



WIDOWS. ■ 319 

pleading look — a tender kind of despair at the wrong- 
headness of the stronger sex. But, tender as she is, she 
does not easily yield even when she loves. The freedom 
she has gone through so much to gain she does not 
rashhy throw away ; and if ever the day comes when 
she gives it up into the keeping of another — for all her 
protestations it comes sometimes — the man to whom she 
succumbs may congratulate himself on a victory more 
nattering to his vanity, and more complete in its surren- 
der of advantages, than he could have gained over any 
other woman. 

Belle or heiress, of higher rank or of greater fame than 
himself, no unmarried woman could have made such a 
sacrifice in her marriage as did this widow of means and 
good looks when she laid her freedom, her joj^ous pres- 
ent and a potential future in his hand. He will be 
lucky if he manages so well that he is never reproached 
for that sacrifice — if his wife never looks back regretfully 
to the time when she was a widow, and if there are no 
longing glances forward to the possibilities ahead, min- 
gled with sighs at the difficulty, of retracing a step when 
fairly made. On the whole, if a woman can live without 
love, or with nothing stronger than a tender sentimental 
friendship, widowhood is the most blissful state she can 
attain. But if she is of a loving nature and fond of 
home, finding her own happiness in the happiness of 
others and indifferent to freedom — thinking, indeed, 
feminine freedom only another word for desolation — she 
will be miserable until she .has doubled her experience, 
and carried on the old into the new T . 



WOMANLINESS. 




HERE are certain words, suggestive rather than 
descriptive, the value of which lies in their very 
vagueness and elasticity of interpretation, by 
which each mind can write its own commentary, 
each imagination sketch out its own illustration. 
And one of them is Womanliness ; a word infinitely more 
subtle in meaning, with more possibilities of definition, 
more light and shade, more facets, more phases, than the 
corresponding word, manliness. This, indeed, must ne- 
cessarily be so, since the character of women is so much 
varied in color and more delicate in its many shades than 
that of men. We call it womanliness when a lady of 
refinement and culture overcomes the natural shrinking 
of sense, and voluntarily enters into the circumstances 
of sickness and poverty, say, that she may help the suf- 
fering in their hour of need ; when she can bravely go 
through some of the most shocking experiences of hu- 
manity for the sake of the higher law of charity ; and we 
call it womanliness when she removes from herself every 
suspicion of grossness, or coarseness, or ugliness, and 
makes her life as dainty as a picture, as lovely as a poem. 
She is womanly when she asserts her own dignity, 
womanly when her highest pride is the sweetest humil- 

320 



WOMANLINESS. 321 

ity, the tenderest self-suppression ; womanly when she 
protects the weaker, womanly when she submits to the 
stronger; to bear in silence and to act with vigor, to 
come to the front on some occasions, to efface herself on 
others, are alike the characteristics of true womanliness; 
as is also the power to be at once practical and aesthetic, 
the careful worker-out of minute details, and the up- 
holder of a sublime idealism, the house-mistress dispens- 
ing bread, and the priestess serving in the temple. In 
fact, it is a very Proteus of a word, and means many 
things by turns ; but it never means anything but what 
is sweet, tender, gracious, and beautiful. Yet, protean as 
it is in form, its substance has hitherto been considered 
simple enough, and its limits very exactly defined; and 
we used to think we knew to a shade what was womanly 
and what was unwomanly — where, for instance, the 
nobleness of dignity ended and the hardness of self- 
assertion began ; while no one could mistake the heroic 
sacrifice of self for the indifference to pain and the gross- 
ness belonging to a coarse nature, which last is essen- 
tially unwomanly, as the first is one of the finest mani- 
festations of true womanliness. 

But if this exactness of interpretation belonged to past 
times, the utmost confusion prevails at present ; and one 
of the points on which society is now at issue in all di- 
rections is just this very question — what is essentially 
unwomanly? and what are the only rightful functions 
of true womanliness ? Men and tradition say one thing, 
certain women say another thing ; and if what these 
women say is to become the rule, society will have to be 
reconstructed altogether, and a new order of human life 
must begin. We have no objection to this, provided the 
new order is better than the old, and the modern phase 
of womanhood more beautiful, more useful to the com- 

V 



322 WOMANLINESS. 

m unity at large, more elevating to general morality than 
was the ancient. But the whole matter hangs on this 
proviso ; and until it can be shown for certain that the 
latter phase is undeniably the better we will hold by the 
former. 

There are certain old — superstitions must we call 
them ? — in our ideas of women, with which we should 
be loth to part. For instance, the infinite importance of 
a mother's influence over her children, and the joy that 
she herself took in their companionship — the pleasure 
that it was to her to hold a baby in her arms, her delight 
and maternal pride in the beauty, the innocence, the 
quaint ways, the odd remarks, the half-embarrassing 
questions, the first faint dawnings of reason and individ- 
uality of the little creatures to which she had given life, 
and which were part of her very being — that pleasure 
and maternal pride were among the characteristics we 
used to ascribe to womanliness; as also the mother's 
power of forgetting herself for her children, of merging 
herself in them as they grew older, and finding her own 
best happiness in theirs. 

But among the advanced women who despise the 
tame teachings of what was once meant by womanliness, 
maternity is considered a bore rather than a blessing; 
the children are shunted to the side when they come; 
and ignorant, undisciplined nurses are supposed to do 
well for wages what mothers will not do for love. Also, 
we held it as womanliness when women resolutely re- 
fused to admit into their presence, to discuss or hear dis- 
cussed before them, impure subjects, or even doubtful 
ones ; when they kept the standard of delicacy, of purity, 
of modesty, at a high level, and made men respect, even 
if they could not imitate. Now the running between 
them and men whose delicacy has been rubbed off long 



WOMANLINESS. 323 

ago by the coarse contact of coarse life, is very close; 
and some of them go far beyond. those of us whose lives 
have been of a quieter and less experimental kind. 
Nothing, indeed, is so startling to a man who has not 
lived in personal and social familiarity with certain sub- 
jects, and who has retained the old chivalrous supersti- 
tions about the modesty and innocent ignorance of wo- 
men, as the easy, unembarrassed coolness with which his 
fair neighbor at a dinner-table will dash off into thorny 
paths, managing, between the soup and the grapes, to 
run through the whole gamut of improper subjects. 

It was also an old notion that rest and quiet and peace 
were natural characteristics of womanliness, and that 
life had been not unfairly apportioned between the sexes, 
each having its own distinctive duties as well as virtues, 
its own burdens as well as its own pleasures. Man was 
to go out and do battle with many enemies ; he was to 
fight with many powers, to struggle for place, for exist- 
ence, for natural rights, to give and take hard blows, to 
lose, perhaps, this good impulse or that noble quality in 
the fray, the battle-field of life not being that wherein 
the highest virtues take root and grow. But he had 
always a home, where was one whose sweeter nature 
brought him back to his better self, a place whence the 
din of the battle was shut out, where he had time for 
rest and spiritual reparation, where a woman's love and 
gentleness and tender thought and unselfish care helped 
and refreshed him, and made him feel that the prize was 
worth the struggle, that the home was worth the fight to 
keep it. And surely it was not asking too much of wo- 
men that the}' should be beautiful and tender to the men 
whose whole life out of doors was one of work for them, 
of vigorous toil that they might be kept in safety and 
luxury. But to the advanced woman it seems so ; con- 



324 WOMANLINESS. 

sequently the home as a place of rest for the man is be- 
coming daily more rare. Soon, it seems to us, there will be 
no such thing as the old-fashioned home. 

Women .are swarming out at all doors, running hither 
and thither among the men, clamoring for arms that 
they may enter into the fray with them, anxious to lay 
aside their tenderness, their modesty, their womanliness, 
that they may become hard and fierce and self-asserting 
like them, thinking it a far higher thing to leave the 
home and the family to take care of themselves, or under 
the care of some incompetent hireling, while they take 
up the manly professions and make themselves the rivals 
in trade of their husbands and brothers. Once it was 
considered an essential of womanliness that a woman 
should be a good house-mistress, a judicious dispenser 
of the income, a careful guide to her servants, a clever 
manager generally. Now practical housekeeping is a 
degradation, and the free soul which disdains the details 
of housekeeping yearns for the intellectual employment 
of an actual, of a law clerk, of a banker's clerk ; mak- 
ing pills is held to be a nobler employment than making 
puddings ; while to distinguish between the merits of 
Egyptians and Mexicans, railroad stocks and government 
bonds, is considered a greater exercise of mind than to 
know fresh salmon from stale, and how to lay in house- 
hold stores with judgment. But the last is just as im- 
portant as the first, and even more so ; for the occasional 
pill, however valuable, is not so valuable as the daily 
pudding, and not all the accumulations made by lucky 
speculation are of any use if the house-bag which holds 
them has a hole in it. 

Once women thought it no ill compliment that they 
should be considered the depositaries of the highest 
moral sentiments. If thev were not held the wiser or 



WOMANLINESS. 325 

the more logical of the two sections of the human race, 
they were held the more religious, the more angelic, 
the better taught of God, and the nearer to the way 
of grace. Now they repudiate the assumption as an 
insult, and call that the sign of their humiliation 
which was once their distinguishing glory. They don't 
want to be patient; self-sacrifice is only a euphemism 
for slavish submission to manly tyranny ; the quiet 
peace of home is miserable monotony ; and though 
they have not come to the length of renouncing the 
Christian virtues theoretically, their theory makes but 
weak practice. But the oddest part of the present odd 
state of things is the curious blindness of women to what 
is most beautiful in themselves. And granting even 
that the world has turned so far upside down that the 
one sex does not care to please the other, still there is a 
good of itself in beauty, which some of our modern wo- 
men seem to overlook. And of all kinds of beauty, that 
which is included in what we mean by womanliness is 
the greatest and most beautiful. 

A womanly woman has neither vanity nor hardness. 
She may be pretty, most likely she is, and she may know 
it ; for, not being a fool, she cannot help seeing it when 
she looks at herself in the glass ; but knowing the fact 
is not being conscious of the possession, and a pretty 
woman, if of the right ring, is not vain, though she 
prizes her beauty as she ought. And she is as little hard 
as vain. Her soul is not given up to ribbons, neither is 
she indifferent to externals, and to dress among them. 
She knows that part of her natural mission is to please 
and be charming, and she knows that dress sets her off, 
and that men feel more enthusiastically toward her when 
she is looking fresh and pretty than when she is a dowdy 
and a fright. And, being womanly, she likes the admi- 

28 



326 WOMANLINESS. 

ration of men, and thinks their love a better thing than 
their indifference. If she likes men she loves children, 
and neither shunts them to the nursery siding, nor frets 
over her miseries when forced to have them about her. 
She knows that she was designed by God and nature for 
a mother, sent into the world for that purpose mainly, 
and she knows that rational maternity means more than 
simply giving life, and then leaving it to others to pre- 
serve it. She has no new-fangled notions about the ani- 
mal character of motherhood, or about the degrading 
character of housekeeping. On the contrary, she thinks 
a populous and happy nursery one of the greatest bless- 
ings of her state, and she puts her pride in the perfect 
ordering, the exquisite arrangements, the comfort, 
thoughtfulness and beauty of her house. She is not 
above her metier as a woman, and she does not want to 
ape the manliness she can never possess. 

She has always been taught that, as there are certain 
manly virtues, so are there certain feminine ones ; and 
that she is the most womanly among women who has 
these virtues in great abundance and in the highest per- 
fection. She has taken it to heart that patience, self- 
sacrifice, tenderness, quietness, with some others, of 
which modesty is one, are the virtues more especially 
feminine ; just as courage, justice, fortitude, and the like, 
belong to men. Passionate ambition, virile energy, the 
love of strong excitement, self-assertion, fierceness, and 
an undisciplined temper, are all qualities which detract 
from her idea of womanliness, and which make her less 
beautiful than she was meant to be ; consequently she 
has cultivated all the meek and tender affections, all the 
unselfishness and thoughts for others which have hither- 
to been the distinctive property of woman, by the exer- 
cise of which she has done her best work, and earned 



WOMANLINESS. 327 

her highest place. She thinks it no degradation that 
she should take pains to please, to soothe, to comfort the 
man who all day long has been doing irksome work that 
her home may be beautiful and her life at ease. She 
does not think it incumbent on her, as a woman of 
spirit, to fly out at an impatient word, to answer back a 
momentary irritation with defiance, to play Roland to 
his Oliver ; her womanliness inclines her to loving for- 
bearance, to patience under difficulties, to unwearied 
cheerfulness under such portion of the inevitable bur- 
den as may have been laid on her ; she does not hold 
herself predestinated by nature to receive only the best 
of everything, and deem herself affronted where her 
cross is bound on her shoulders. Rather, she under- 
stands that she too must take the rough with the 
smooth; but that, as her husband's way in life is 
rougher than hers, his trials greater, his burden heavier, 
it is her duty — and her privilege — to help him all she 
can with her tenderness and her love ; and to give back 
to him at home, if in a different form, some of the care 
he has expended while abroad to make her path 
smooth. 

In a word, the womanliness which we all once loved, 
and have still a kind of traditional belief in, is the wo- 
manliness that regards the wishes of men as of some 
weight in female action — that holds to love rather than 
opposition ; to reverence, not defiance ; that takes more 
pride in her husband's fame than in her own; that 
glories in the protection of his name, and in her state as 
wife ; that feels the honor given to her as wife and mat- 
ron far dearer than any she may earn for personal prow- 
ess ; and that believes in her consecration as a helpmeet 
for man, not in a rivalry which a few generations will 
ripen into a coarse and bitter enmity. 



PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE. 




)OVE, says Herbert Spencer, is an emotion of the 
highest complexity, and consequently of the 
cpB^ greatest strength. Around the purely physical 
K'-^ elements gather all varieties of powerful emotions 
which blend and unite in the closest harmony. 
First come all the impressions which are produced by 
the beautiful, the explanation of which would involve a 
long and most difficult analysis. Then we have the sen- 
timent of affection, which may exist between persons of 
the same sex, but which undergoes a special exaltation 
when existing between lovers. Next come the senti- 
ments of admiration or reverence; and, beyond them 
again, the love of approbation, which is keenly excited 
by the knowledge that we are preferred to all the world, 
and preferred by one whom we admire beyond all others. 
Allied to this is the sentiment of self-approval, when we 
are flattered by the sense of the great merits to which 
we owe so great a triumph. Beyond this the " proprie- 
tary feeling," or the pleasure of mutual possession. And, 
finally, there is an exaltation of the sympathies when 
our pleasures are heightened by the close participation 
of another person in all our enjoyments. We need not 
inquire whether the analysis is complete or accurate; at 

328 



PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE. 329 

any rate, it illustrates pretty fairly the amazing complex- 
ity of a passion which we are apt to describe as simple. 
When a young gentleman at a ball sees the young lady 
who is above all other young ladies enter the room, he 
is conscious only of a keen thrill of emotion so vivid 
and powerful as to displace every other sentiment for 
the time. If Herbert Spencer were standing by him, 
and were to propose to give him a lecture on the con- 
stituent elements of his passion, we fear, though we 
mean no disrespect to Mr. Spencer, that he would con- 
sider the philosopher to be a bore. But perhaps a few 
years afterward, or possibly on the next day, if his suit 
should have come to an untimely catastrophe, he might 
be inclined to take his passion to pieces, and he would 
recognize the justice of most of the remarks which we 
have summarized. In that case he would perhaps find 
the explanation of some phenomena which are a little 
puzzling to bystanders, though the lover himself has not 
the leisure to attend to them. 

Thus, for example, everybody is puzzled by the extra- 
ordinary caprices of love-making. The ladies who say 
in novels that they cannot understand " what he could 
see in her " are generally held up to ridicule as obviously 
blinded by jealousy. And yet their want of perception 
is not only sincere, but is shared by perfectly impartial 
spectators. When we see the way in which marriages 
are brought about in the world, we wonder that the pur- 
suit of match-making should be found so interesting by 
amiable persons. Of course match-making as a variety 
of fortune-hunting is only too intelligible, but there is 
a match-making of a much less sordid variety. All 
amiable women take the keenest delight in attempting 
to pair off their friends and relations according to their 
own views of the fitness of things. And yet they are 

28* 



330 PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE. 

always meeting with the strangest and, at first sight, the 
most unaccountable disappointments. The man of in- 
tellect has an extraordinary taste for stupid women ; the 
handsome man of fashion is carried off by a poor, ugly, 
and commonplace woman ten years older than himself; 
the pompous prig secures the brightest and liveliest of 
her sex ; fox-hunters attract poetesses, and poets marry 
wives who can do nothing but mend their shirts. Such 
strange contrasts have led to the development of the 
plausible theory that people are attracted rather by 
qualities complementary than by qualities similar to 
their own. This doctrine, however, fails by being too 
comprehensive. We must admit that like often attracts 
like; and if we add that like also attracts unlike, we 
have a theory which explains nothing, because it explains 
everything. Every match that ever was or ever will be 
made may be brought under one category or the other ; 
but until we can give some reason for telling beforehand 
which set of causes is likely to be operative in a given 
case, we are no nearer an explanation than Ave were 
before. The only general rule at which we have been ena- 
bled to arrive by experience is the rather discouraging 
one that people whom we like always marry people whom 
we dislike. Friends seem to have a perverse delight in 
forming new combinations which may be as discordant 
as possible with their ancient ties. We do not, however, 
see our way to erecting any philosophical theory upon 
this experience. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer's analysis may perhaps help us 
to understand some of the conditions of the problem, 
though the philosopher has yet to arise who will be able 
to tell us from the inspection of a young lady or gentle- 
man what will be the character of her or his future 
partner. In the first place, it is to be remarked that 



PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE. 331 

some of the elements which he describes do not enter 
into the passion in many cases, or at least do not enter 
into its earlier stages. Self-esteem, for example, is the 
reward of successful love-making, and strengthens the 
passion when it has once been formed, but it cannot be 
the primary cause. 

Mere contiguity is very often a sufficient explanation 
of the phenomenon. A man and woman brought to- 
gether in Robinson Crusoe's island would almost inevit- 
ably fall in love, however unpromising their characters 
might be; and though large cities are very unlike a 
desert island, there are frequently situations, even in the 
most crowded societies, where conditions substantially 
similar are reproduced. There are circumstances under 
which it would be almost a breach of good manners not 
to indulge in a little flirtation. A human being has such 
a variety of strong feelings in a state of solution that any 
object will be sufficient to determine their crystalliza- 
tion. This is, indeed, the primary axiom on the sub- 
ject. We have all a vast amount of disposable emotion ; 
we all long to admire and to be admired ; we are grateful 
for compliments ; we wish to have something to call our 
own; we want our sentiments to be confirmed by sym- 
pathy ; and, therefore, when once any accident has, so to 
speak, drawn the sluices, a whole torrent of emotion 
rushes into the channel provided for it, and we attribute 
to the one external and assignable cause what really re- 
sults from our own states of feeling. Because a par- 
ticular match has exploded the magazine we absurdly 
argue that no other match would have done equally well. 
We set up the first idol that comes to hand, and suppose 
that its perfections are the sole cause of our worship, 
when, in fact, the desire to worship something has pre- 
pared us to prostrate ourselves before any shrine that 



332 PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE. 

offers itself. Love being a compound of so many forces, 
any one which is set in action draws all the rest after it 
by the principle of association. But all this does not 
answer the question as to how our choice is first deter- 
mined. A young gentleman may see some hundreds of 
young ladies before he is brought down by one who is 
perhaps amongst the least apparently attractive of the 
whole number. That is the puzzle which is constantly 
recurring, and a solution of it would be of immense value 
to all match-makers, whether of the loftier or baser va- 
riety. What is the most promising method of attack? 
Which of all the causes that may precipitate the passion 
is the most generally available ? 

To such a question we can of course give no satisfactory 
answer. It may be observed, however, that it has been 
very much obscured by the labors of novelists. Novels 
are supposed to be the embodiment of the author's know- 
ledge of human nature — a supposition to which there is 
the trifling objection that very few novelists know any- 
thing of human nature, and that at most they are fa- 
miliar with particular instances and not with general prin- 
ciples. They of course go upon the general assumption 
that their hero and heroine are to be as attractive as pos- 
sible, and they lay particular stress upon the merit most 
easily described — that of personal beauty. Jane Eyre 
for a time set the fashion of ugly heroines, but we have 
long since reverted to the old system. Accordingly, an 
exaggerated estimate is placed upon the charms of beauty 
and upon the amiable qualities of mind and person which 
form part of the ordinary ideal of feminine merit. The 
error involved in this doctrine is that it lays far too much 
stress on the objective as distinguished from the subject- 
ive causes of falling in love. It assumes that the pas- 
sion is determined by the external rather than by the 



PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE. 333 

internal impulses ; that a person falls in love because an 
attractive object is presented to him or her, and not be- 
cause he or she is prepared for a passion of some kind. 
When the true principle is firmly grasped, it is obvious 
that the most successful match -makers must be those 
who adopt a different line of attack. 

Amongst the passions, for example, which go to form 
the aggregate is the desire for sympathy. Suppose, then, 
that a young gentleman has a taste for political economy 
and pigeon-shooting. He may be assailed more effect- 
ively by a plain young woman who will submit to hear 
him lecturing on the theory of rent and the incidence 
of taxation, or who will applaud his successful slaughter 
of birds, than by the most beautiful girl who will not 
condescend to take an interest in his pursuits. The 
great art of flattery provides the most efficient instru- 
ments for bringing down game of this kind. A clever 
man often prefers a fool to a clever woman, because the 
fool has the one talent of listening and the clever woman 
may have the vanity to keep opinions of her own. The 
brilliant man of fashion is attracted by the apparently 
uninteresting old maid, because nothing is more flatter- 
ing than that humble adoration which other women are 
too proud to bestow. Almost all cases of perverse 
matches may be explained after the event by the skill 
or the accidental felicity with which a commerce of 
reciprocal flattery has been established. Once put two 
people in that relation, and all the associated emotions 
may easily be introduced. It is as easy to produce an 
sesthetic admiration by working upon the desire for sym- 
pathy as to proceed in the inverse method; and the 
assumption that we should always begin with what is 
supposed to be the natural beginning is the cause of half 
our perplexities. But though these seem to be the first 



334 



PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE. 



principles of the science, we admit that its complexity 
baffles all attempts at a systematic deduction of its re- 
moter doctrines. Luckily or otherwise, some people 
have developed so much practical skill in applying the 
most efficient methods that a philosophy of the art seems 
to be superfluous as well as chimerical. 





THE FIRST VISIT. 




FALLING IN LOVE. 




FTER all, if we could only let it alone, what fun 
"falling in love" might be! On the whole it is 
the cheapest and readiest way in which one can 
)%^J get happiness out of life. We do not say this 
from any feeling of cynicism, but simply because 
the summer days bring home to us how much money 
and time and trouble happiness generally costs. A few 
hundred dollars is no great matter for a run up the 
Matterhorn, a lounge in a gondola, or a peep at Vesuvius 
and the lazzaroni. But still the dollars are something. 
We agree that our holiday is worth the money, but the 
mone}^ has to be paid, and the consciousness of this 
throws a gentle haze over the glories of the lagoon or 
the azure splendor of the Bay of Naples. And then 
there is the time to be wasted, and the packing to be 
done; there is the rush to get one's work hurried up, 
and the weariness of trains, the discomfort of inns, the 
extortion of landlords, the tyranny of guides. We add 
all these to the check and still feel that the balance is 
decidedly in favor of happiness; but there were mo- 
ments when the balance was hard to be struck. 

On the other hand, the happiness of falling in love 
costs just nothing at all. The excitement, the lazy de- 

335 



336 FALLING IN LOVE. 

light, the interest we experience in Alp, or bay, or Grand 
Canal, we can get just as intensely out of a peep at a 
single little face or the whisper of a single little voice. 
All this comes without fuss or worry or bother, without 
spending a penny, without waste of temper or time. 
And it comes with a perfect surprise. This is what our 
holidays never give us. We know the exact moment 
when we shall reach the next resting-place, and the ter- 
rible streets and galleries we shall find when we get 
there. It is impossible to banish every atom of informa- 
tion out of our minds ; and if we could, is there not a 
Murray or a Harper to sweep it back again ? But the 
special charm of falling in love lies in its suddenness 
and absence of warning. 

It was at the moment when one was crushed to death 
on Mrs. Knock emoff's stairs that the blue eyes and the 
golden hair shone down on us. It was when we were 
bothered about those shares in the Bundelcund Bank 
that we caught sight of that peerless brow. It was in 
battle with a perjured horsebreaker at the last term at 
court that, bebriefed as we were, we bent before the 
witchery of that little finger. There are times, no doubt, 
when life seems a mere rut, a groove of necessity, in 
which act and thought run on under inevitable con- 
ditions, a mere colorless waste of law and order over 
which one wanders, hungering and thirsting. But then 
there are moments when the palm-tuft soars suddenly 
before one, and the plash of waters falls in an instant on 
the ear. 

The special charm of falling in love is, that nobody 
can tell when the oasis is likely to come. Something of 
the zest of the gaming-table, something of the faith of 
Mr. Micawber in events which " turn up," wakes in the 
heart of the soberest and grayest of men when they get 



FALLING IN LOVE. 337 

down from their camels and stretch themselves in the 
cool and pleasant shade. A sense of the freshness, the 
variety, the range of human life, opens up for us in the 
hour of falling in love. It is delightful to fling our abso- 
lute defiance at probability and good sense in a world 
which bows servilely before good sense and probability. 
It is irresistibly charming to resolve life into a game of 
pitch and toss. Half the pleasure of our little encamp- 
ment by the cool waters lies in its absolute unreasonable- 
ness. Around us lies a world in which people give an 
account of their actions. But nobody expects us to give 
an account of ours. Nobody calls even on the most 
logical of lovers to sum up the causes of his falling in 
love. We revel in the Puckish contradiction which each 
moment gives to all theories and reasonings and antici- 
pations. 

The man who likes chatty women finds his doom in a 
girl who never opens her lips ; the cynic who hates bread 
and butter trembles before a miss in her teens ; the prim 
young neophyte of the parsonage worships the fastest 
of Dianas. No doubt there is a method in all this mad- 
ness, and a philosopher yet to come will rescue this bit of 
outlying existence/ from the realm of caprice. But as 
yet nobody has brought love within the calculation of 
chances. It is just as impossible as it was in the days 
of our forefathers, to predict whom we shall fall in love 
with. It is still as difficult as it ever was to decide who 
is likely to fall in love with us. The only result which 
comes of meditation on the subject is a sort of convic- 
tion that under certain perfectly inexplicable conditions 
it is possible for anybody to fall in love with anybody 
else. 

No doubt this is sheer treason against the conven- 
tional theory on the subject. The Family Herald still 

29 W 



338 FALLING IN LOVE. 

calls upon us week after week to worship the golden 
calves of Darby and Joan which Mr. Coventry Patmore 
has set up, and the call still retains its power at least 
over " the deeper heart of humanity ;" all our protests 
against calf worship would never rob it of a single votary 
among the lowest of the people. The code of poet and 
novelist is observed with a touching obedience in the 
kitchen. When the " young man " of life-below-stairs 
falls in love with his " young woman," falling in love 
means walking together, and walking together means 
marrying. Constancy, in spite of Coleridge's dictum, 
lives in realms below. The tameness, the monotony, the 
'uniformity of such a passion, harmonizes well enough 
with the tone of the servants' hall. But we venture to 
demur when a chorus of poets and sentimentalists call 
upon us to bow down before the mumbo-jumbo of the 
kitchen. Their preaching is simply untrue to our ex- 
perience. No doubt Heine's "Palm Tree " is the most 
charming of poems, and "Elective Affinities" is not 
quite the dullest of novels, but, as a matter of fact, the 
pining souls whom we meet are commonly young things 
over thirty, and fate and destiny resolve themselves in 
the bulk of cases into a rencontre in a ball-room or a chat 
on a rainy afternoon. There is no harm in giving big 
names to such little matters, but there is great harm in 
the sentimental Pharisaism which the theory of poets 
and spinsters involves. 

If Darby and Joan are the orthodox ideals of human 
affection, then nine-tenths of the human race as they 
really exist must be doomed as heretical. For one hu- 
man being who loves with this "concentrated energy," 
there are a dozen who are rovers in love as in croquet. 
For one who loves " once for ever," there are a hundred 
who are for ever tumbling into love and tumbling out of 



FALLING IN LOVE. 339 

it. The infinite variety of human tempers laughs at 
these big, pretentious generalizations, but they do their 
work nevertheless. Just as marriage under the able 
management of the intriguing mother begets social hypoc- 
risy, so love-making with the aid of Messrs. Tupper and 
Tennyson begets the hypocrisy of the affections. How 
difficult to find one's self in the ruined tower among the 
chicken-bones of the picnic without looking for the 
statue of the armed knight and one's own Genevieve ! 
How impossible to listen to the far-off chimes from the 
cathedral tower as we drive home from the country ball 
in the summer dawn, without uttering the " three little 
words " that made the Gardener's Daughter so supremely 
comfortable ! And yet Genevieve is but a hoyden, and a 
picnic a picnic ; and the gay little squeeze of three fin- 
gers in the cloak-room is no such great matter, after all I 
Life is infinitely too delightful a thing to allow all its 
freshness and gayety to be washed out of it by a flood of 
romantic and monotonous twaddle. Let poets sing as 
they will, every summer will bring its " free love " back 
again. It is only in the sunshine that one can really fall 
in love. Winter and the fireside and the necessity of 
conversation give love-making a serious, practical air, 
which robs it of all joy and geniality. The sunshine 
pours around it its own bright, indistinct, vivifying haze. 
Sport with Amaryllis in the shade and. the sport ends 
with proposals and calculations of the prosaic order ; but 
pure poetry broods over that nest in the deep fern, where 
the sun-gleam glances from tress after tress as one toys 
with the tangles of Neaera's hair. It is difficult to be at 
once serious and hot. With the thermometer at 90 it is 
physically impossible to be impassioned or to lavish 
vows of an ardent affection. "For ever and for ever" 
loses any absurd definiteness. 



340 FALLING IN LOVE. 

What is really possible is to lie in a sunny blissful- 
ness and to break one's Nirvana of enjoyment now and 
then by a whisper of delight. Then "to enjoy is all the 
art we know." Old things have passed away — father's 
growl over our Oxbridge bills, mamma's lecture over 
that waltz with young Prodigal — and all things have 
become new. It is amazing to think that we w T ere bored 
by old Twaddle at breakfast. It is hard to believe that 
one will be bored again by him at dinner. Here in the 
fern-leaves, with the sun overhead, and Nesera half doz- 
ing over Lothair, boredom seems impossible. It is this 
transformation of life, this banishment of its ugliness 
and its bother, which gives such a zest to falling in love. 
Love is simply vulgarized when it stoops to entangle 
itself with puzzles about papa's consent and problems 
about butchers' bills. Its true life is the life of pure 
fancy. One knows that to assert Nesera's red hair to be 
" golden " is an absolute defiance of fact ; but then half 
the charm of love-making lies in the defiance of fact. 
One knows amid all one's protestations of constanc}^ that 
Clarissa's golden hair will be red to-morrow, but in the 
sunshine there is no to-morrow. 

It is the height of human enjoyment to get rid of the 
trammels of fact and time, to assert the impossible, to 
believe the incredible. For love is perfectly insolent in 
the challenge it hurls at common sense. Major Penden- 
nis wonders how the boy can love a woman old enough 
to be his mother ; but Arthur flings himself just as 
ardently at Miss Costigan's feet. What are her years to 
him? She is ever young, ever fair. Is it possible to see 
crow's feet around eyes at which one gazes with the ardor 
of a first affection ? She is as old as one's elder sister, 
and one's elder sister is an old maid, but she — she is 
Phyllis, and age flies from her. She is the standing ex- 



FALLING IN LOVE. 341 

ception to arithmetic and the calendar. When the in- 
evitable break comes, what tears we shed over that match 
which we have so elaborately planned ! It is true that 
Phyllis is over thirty, and no planning can bring the 
match nearer than five or six years ; but we have all the 
sublime satisfaction of flinging ourselves into our pocket 
handkerchief, and ebbing our heart out ! only let us sob 
in the sunshine. It is the sunshine that gives sweetness 
to our tears, as it gives an Arcadian innocence to the 
Platonic friendship we swear to the pretty hand on 
whose finger lies a marriage ring. 

One does not want social facts to disappear, but sun- 
shine throws a charming haze around them. The ring 
is present, but it ceases to be oppressive ; one is free to 
sentimentalize on the happiness that might have been, 
and to sketch lightly the perfect blankness of the life 
that is; but it is too hot to push the thesis beyond the 
realm of sentiment. It is in remaining within the limits 
of that realm that we can alone taste the bliss of " falling 
in love." People of a soberer, practical sort can walk 
into love as sensibty and un poetically as they can walk 
out of it. People of an ardent, impassioned sort can fling 
themselves into ecstasies that pass our understanding. 
But to fall in love without prose and without ecstasy, to 
get all the beauty and grace and variety of affection out 
of life without passion, and without boredom, and with- 
out entanglement, is an art reserved for golden spirits 
who know the virtue of moderation and " how to let it 
alone." 

29% 



FIRST LOVE. 




3/| T is one of the oddest points of difference between 
, T man and woman that woman has no First Love. 
>> The long alphabet of her affections is without 
any distinct end or beginning; she mounts by 
insensible gradations from dolls and kittens and 
pet brothers to the zenith of passion, to descend by the 
same insensible gradations from her zenith of passion 
through pet brothers to tabby cats. There is no such 
event as a first kiss forms in a boy's life to mark for 
woman the transition from girlhood to the sudden ma- 
turity of passion ; she has been kissing and purring and 
fondling and petting from her cradle, and she will pet 
and fondle and purr and kiss to her grave. Love, in 
the technical sense of the word, is with her little more 
than an intensifying of her ordinary life. There is no 
new picture, but the colors are for the while a little 
heightened and the tone raised. Presently the vividness 
of color will fade again, and the cool grays lower the 
tone, and the passion of life will have died away. But 
there will be no definite moment at which one could 
fairly say that love came or went. A girl who is not 
whispering in a lover's ear will always say frankly 
enough that she never knew what it was not to be in 

342 




THE OLD, OLD STORY. 



FIRST LOVE. 343 

love. There is one obvious deduction which she forgets 
to draw, that there never can be a time when she can 
know what it is to be in love. Here and there, of course, 
a woman may be colder, or later in development, or 
more sell-conscious, and may divide by more rigidly 
marked lines the phases of her life. But even then, if 
she be a woman, at all, she can have no first love. 

Feeling, with woman, has no past, it has no future. 
Every phase of her life begins with an act of oblivion. 
Every love is a first love. " I never loved any one before " 
is said, and said truly, to a dozen loving ears in succes- 
sion. u The first thing I should like to meet with in 
Paradise," said Lady Wortley Montagu, " would be the 
river Lethe, the stream of Forgetfulness." But woman 
finds a little rivulet of Lethe at every stage of her heart's 
career. If she remembers the past at all, it is to offer it 
up as a burnt sacrifice to the deity of the present. When 
Cleopatra talked about Cassar to Mark Antony, she passed, 
no doubt, her fingers through her lover's hair, and won- 
dered how she could ever have doted on such a bald- 
pated fellow as the Dictator. Had she succeeded in 
charming Octavius, she would have wondered equally 
at her infatuation for such a ne'er-do-well as Antony. 
And so it is no wonder that a woman's first love, even 
if she realizes it at all, goes down in this general wreck 
of the past. But in man's life it is a revolution. It is, 
in fact, the one thing that makes him man. The world 
of boyhood is strictly a world of boys. Sisters, cousins, 
aunts, mothers, are mixed up in the general crowd of 
barbarians that stand without the playground. 

There are few warmer or more poetic affections than 
the chivalrous friendship of schoolfellows ; there is no 
truer or more genuine worship than a boy's worship of 
the hero of the scrimmage or the cricket-field. It is a 



344 FIRST LOVE. 

fine world in itself, but it is a wonderfully narrow and 
restricted world. Not a girl may peep over the palings. 
Girls can't jump, or fag out, or swarm up a tree; they 
have nothing to talk about as boys talk; they never 
heard of that glorious swipe of Old Brown's, they are 
awful milk-sops, they cry and " tell mamma," they are 
afraid of a governess and of a cow. It is impossible to 
conceive a creature more utterly contemptible in a boy's 
eyes than a girl of his own age usually is. Then in 
some fatal moment comes the revolution. The barrier 
of contempt goes down with a crash. The boy-world 
disappears. Brown, that god of the playground, is cast 
to the owls and to the bats. There is a sudden coolness 
in the friendship that was to last from school to the 
grave. Paper-chases and the annual match with the 
"old fellows" cease to be the highest objects of human 
interest. There is less excitement than there was last 
year when a great cheer welcomes the news that Mugby 
has got the Ireland. The boy's life has become muddled 
and confused. The old existence is sheering off, and the 
new comes shyly, fitfully. It is only by a sort of com- 
pulsion that he will own that he is making all this 
" fuss " about a girl. For the moment he rebels against 
the spell of that one little face, the witchery of that one 
little hand. He lingers on the border of this new country 
from whence there is no return to the old playing-fields. 
He is shy, strange to this world of woman,, and woman's 
talk and woman's ways. The surest, steadiest foot on 
the cricket-ground tumbles over foot-stools, and tangles 
itself in colored wools. The sturdiest arm that ever 
wielded bat trembles at the touch of a tiny finger. The 
voice that rang out like a trumpet among the tumult of 
foot-ball hushes and trembles and falters in saying half 
a dozen commonplace words. The old sense of mastery 



FIRST LOVE. 345 

is gone. He knows that every chit in the nursery has 
found out his secret, and is laughing over it. He blushes, 
and a boy's blush is a hot, painful thing, when the sis- 
terly heads bend together and he hears them whispering 
what a fool he is. Yes, he is a fool — that is one thing 
which he feels quite certain about. There is only one 
other thing he feels even more certain about — that he is 
in love, and that love has made him a man. 

We are not, of course, going to trench on the field 
of poets and moral preachers, or to expound, like Sir 
Barnes Newcome, the philosophy of the affections, or to 
demonstrate with Miss Faithful and Mrs. Fawcett the 
great office which First Love fulfills in the economy of 
man. The only remark we have to make is the very ob- 
vious one which moral preachers may be pardoned for 
forgetting, that it is, on the whole, a wonderfully pleasant 
thing. If one enters it through Purgatory it is none the 
less a Paradise at which one arrives, an Eden with its 
tree of knowledge and its tree of life. There is none of 
the distrust, the irony, the low-pitched expectations of 
after affections ; no practical second thoughts ; no calcu- 
lations about wedding-rings and marriage settlements. 

In its beginning, love still hovers in a sort of de- 
batable land between the real and the unreal, with a 
good deal of .the fun and make-believe of boyhood and 
girlhood about it yet. There is the old school trick of 
"secrets," of "mystery," whisperings in corners, stolen 
glances, dropped gloves, little letters deposited in crafty 
hiding-places. There is the carrying out of the new ritual 
of love, as love novels give it to us, the stealing photo- 
graphs, and the kissing locks of hair, and the writing 
love poems with a certain weakness in their rhyme, and 
the watching the light in our mistress' window. It is 
wonderful with what a rigorous exactitude, with what a 



346 FIRST LOVE. 

grave seriousness, we carry out our part in the pleasant 
little comedy. But it is no comedy to us while we figure 
in it. It is the revelation of a new world — a world of 
light and joy, a world, too, of wonder and enchantment 
and mystery. " Tout est mystere dans l'amour," we sing 
with old Fontaine, " ses fleches, son carquois, son flam- 
beau, son enfance," and to these mysteries we are ad- 
mitted as worshipers. It is hard not to feel a little 
flutter of pride at being not quite what other people are, 
not quite what we ourselves were a month ago. What 
would others understand of this new love -language that 
we talk? What of our spasmodic little chatter, broken 
with passionate ejaculations that have no relation to any 
subject that could be discussed in earth or heaven, inter- 
rupted by silence more eloquent than words ? What of 
those delicious caprices that follow on the sense of power, 
those bright little quarrels that only exist in the faith 
that severance is impossible ? What of this new love of 
letter-writing in fingers that once hated a pen ? We exult 
in the thought that St. Valentine's day taxes the energies 
of the post-office more than any other day in the year. 
We laugh to think of a great government department 
in a flutter because Love says " write," and we have writ- 
ten. What of this new delight in solitude, in "mooning 
about," as we used to call it in our unregenerate days ? 
Surely it is something that love conquers boredom, that 
one is never alone when one can peep at a locket, or 
spell over again those sweetest and most crossed of let- 
ters, or debate whether the object of one's passion looked 
best in a blue dress or a brown. 

But all these are the mere outer accidents of life, and 
it is life itself that is so changed. What a fresh boister- 
ous breeze of life and liberty comes sweeping down on 
the tranquil little soul whose deepest joys and sorrows 



FIRST LOVE. 347 

have been over her lessons and her doll ! All the youth 
in her veins quickens at the touch. She is a hoyden, a 
scapegrace in a moment; the governess shrugs her 
shoulders; mamma begins to think of her "coming 
out." Then there is the sudden revulsion, the delicious 
inequalities and inconsistencies of a period of transition, 
the shyness and stiffness, the silence, the reverie. Then 
at a bound there is the return on pure girlhood, the de- 
fiant revolt, the rebellion against this absorption in 
another. Odi et amo, it is the close neighborhood of the 
two that gives each its charm. She is a flirt, a coquette; 
for what is coquetry but the half incredulity of a girl 
unable to believe in her own happiness, eager to con- 
vince herself by any experience of the new strength and 
attraction that she has gained ? After-life brings deeper, 
intenser passion, but never sensations so vivid, so rapid, 
so exquisitely contrasted, never so involuntary. A girl 
lies passive in the very dreaminess of joy as emotion 
after emotion sweeps over her, faith and jealousy and 
bitterness and delight, like the wind sweeping over 
iEolian chords and awakening music as wild and way- 
ward as the music in her heart. 

Men spend a great deal too much time, says a great 
philosopher, over love. We share Mr. Mill's opinion, 
though, probably, Mr. Mill would hardly share our 
grounds for it. We don't grudge a moment given to a 
man's First Love, because a man believes in it. " Credo 
quia impossible " — " I believe just because it is impos- 
sible " — replied Tertullian to the objector to his faith ; 
and it is a gain to humanity that at the very outset of 
life one should meet and believe in a thing so impossible 
as first love. We are saved, at any rate, from the dreary 
gospel of Mr. Buckle, from regarding ourselves as ma- 
chines, and tabulating our lives in averages. So, too, 



348 FIRST LOVE. 

there are days, early days in a man's course, when, sit- 
ting alone and looking on a sunset, he feels like a grain 
of sand at the mercy of winds that blow whence and 
whither he knows not. First love, at any rate, saves us 
out of thoughts like these by quickening in us pulses of 
pain and pleasure that will beat on, drive the winds as 
they list. How much, too, of the reverence, the reserve, 
the grace and refinement of character, springs out of 
those days of distant, hushed worship, of all-surrender- 
ing, all-daring faith? A mere girl, like a mere daisy, 
rouses within us thoughts too deep for tears. That first 
touch of passion gives a beauty of its own to the temper 
of a man, as it gives it to the face of a woman. Who has 
noted the strange, sweet change that softens the abrupt 
gesture, and gives music to the hasty speech, in the 
hoyden when love's finger first touches her? When 
Pygmalion's statue-bride quickened into human life, she 
must have felt, one fancies, an inexpressible joy in the 
sense of the rapture her beauty had created and could sus- 
tain. It is this new sense— this consciousness that, as she 
simply lives and moves, her grace and power is going out 
of her to gladden, at least, one heart of man r s — that quick- 
ens a girl's face out of the hardness and immobility of 
earlier years. From the mere physical, immobile form, 
it becomes life and spirit, sensitive to every wave of 
thought, feeling, reflection. The very wonder of the new 
world she looks out upon, its interest, its awe, mirror 
themselves in the quick alternations of enthusiasm, of 
terror, of tenderness. 

It is quite as well to get a little beauty into the world, 
quite as well to preserve a little poetry in man, and while 
first love does this we don't mean to surrender it. But 
we freely give up its successors. The mere conventional 
repetition of the real thing, when its first fervor of faith 



FIRST LOVE. 



349 



has fled, the repetition of the old love-litanies by lips 
that have learnt the irony of them, the mechanical per- 
formance of the ritual that has become a sham, that is a 
sheer waste of human time. When a man has got safely 
over thirty, and looks back on the number of these per- 
formances, their extreme dreariness, and the time they 
have cost him, he feels a twinge of compunction, and a 
certain pleasure in the consciousness that he is now, at 
any rate, secure till forty. As for women, till they 
are quickened by the apostleship of the champions 
of their " rights," they will probably go on thinking 
these little farces the pleasantest .things in life. 




FLIRTATIONS. 




HERE are certain things which can never be ac- 
curately described — things so shadowy, so fitful, 
so dependent on the mood of the moment, both 
3 in the audience and the actor, that analysis and 
representation are equally at fault. And flirting 
is one of them. What is flirting ? Who can define or 
determine ? It is more serious than talking nonsense, 
and not so serious as making love ; it is not chaff, and it 
is not feeling ; it means something more than indiffer- 
ence, and yet something less than affection ; it binds no 
one, it commits no one, it only raises expectations in the 
individual, and sets society on the lookout for results ; 
it is a plaything in the hands of the experienced, but a 
deadly weapon against the breast of the unwary ; and it 
is a thing so vague, so protean, that the most accurate 
measurer of moral values would be puzzled to say where 
it exactly ends and where serious intentions begin. 

But again we ask, What is flirting? what constitutes 
its essence? what makes the difference between it and 
chaff on the one hand, and it and love-making on the 
other? Has it a cumulative power, and, according to 
the old saying of many a little making a mickle, does a 
long series of small flirtings make up a concrete whole 

350 



FLIRTATIONS. 351 

of love ? or is it, like an unmortared heap of bricks, pos- 
sibilities of utility if conditions were changed, but value- 
less as things are? The man who would be able to 
reduce flirting to a definite science, who could analyze 
its elements and codify its laws, would be doing infinite 
service to his generation : but we fear that this would be 
as difficult as finding the pot of gold under the end of a 
rainbow, or catching small birds with a pinch of salt. 
Every one has his or her own ideas of what constitutes 
flirting ; consequently every one judges of that pleasant 
exercise according to individual temperament and ex- 
perience. 

Faded flowers, who see impropriety in everything they 
are no longer able to enjoy, say, with more or less sever- 
ity, that Henry and Angelina are flirting if they are 
laughing and whispering in an alcove together, probably 
at the most innocent nonsense in the world ; but the fact 
that they are enjoying themselves in their own way, 
albeit a sill} r one, is enough for the faded flower to think 
they are after mischief, flirting being to her mind about 
the worst bit of mischief that fallen humanity can per- 
petrate. 

A young lady is liable to be branded as a flirt if she 
dances twice at a ball with the same partner, although 
that partner may be the only man she knows in the 
room, or the only coadjutor with whom she can perform 
without detriment to her skirts. She is a flirt, in the 
eyes of her fair friends at least, if her tastes naturally 
throw her into the society of men, if she be fond of 
fishing or rowing, if she include in her vocabulary a 
piece of slang caught from her college brother. She is 
a flirt in the eyes of every mother in May Fair but her 
own, if she goes down to supper on the arm of any young 
man of good fortune. She is a flirt if she be pretty, 



352 FLIRTATIONS. 

gushing, or talkative. In short, unless she subsides into 
an inanimate lump of insipidity and conventionalism, 
she will be pronounced wanting in maidenly reserve in 
some quarter or other by a jury of censorious matrons. 

Timid girls newly out, and not yet used to the odd 
ways of men, think they are being flirted with outrage- 
ously if their partner fires off the meekest little compli- 
ment at them, or looks at them more tenderly than he 
would look at a cabbage ; but bolder spirits of both sexes 
think nothing worthy of the name which does not in- 
clude a few questionable familiarities, and an equivoque 
or two, more or less "risky." With some, flirting is 
nothing but the passing fun of the moment ; with others, 
it is the first lesson in the great unopened book, and 
means the beginning of the end ; with some, it is not 
even angling with intent; with others, it is deep-sea 
fishing with a broad, boldly made net, and taking all 
fish that come in as good for sport if not for food. 

We flirt when we consciously convey to the mind of 
a person of the opposite sex the assurance that his or her 
society is peculiarly agreeable to us. A look, a word, a 
gesture, is enough to carry the flattering- conviction to 
the breast of our companion. One who dances may 
read, " I think you charming, and I like this conversa- 
tion immensely." The media by which a flirtation is 
conducted are multiform, and it is in the selection of the 
most effective that real skill is shown. Flirting opera- 
tions are usually carried on under a cloud of small-talk. 
The art consists in infusing into this a tone of delicate 
flattery and covert admiration. To ask a fair lady 
whether she has been to the opera or the exhibition of 
the Academy argues an innocence worthy of Adam 
before the Fall; but to supplement such a commonplace 
by feigning an anxiety to know her favorite picture or 



FLIRTATIONS. 353 

opera proves that you have at least some rudimentary 
notion of the way to flirt. Flirting is essentially an 
artificial and exotic accomplishment. It implies an 
advanced stage of civilization. It derives its food and 
sustenance from the accessories and embellishments of 
social life. Pictures, music, books, amusements, — these 
are the food on which flirtations are nourished. If it 
were not for these, our pretty looks and tender nothings 
would soon languish and die. There is no flirting, prop- 
erly so called, among the lower classes. " Keeping com- 
pany" is by no means an analogous institution; it 
means much more or much less. There is nothing in 
the advances made by Betsy Jane to her drayman which 
savors of flirtation. Her admiration is far too evident 
and open-mouthed. The element of reserve and restraint 
is wholly wanting. She has no buffer in the shape of 
chit-chat conversation to interpose between her own 
addiction and the ardor of her admirer. She has none 
of the machinery for keeping him at a certain distance. 
The struggle for existence to which Corydon is exposed, 
and the constant toil of his life, leave no time for flirting 
with Phyllis. He casts sheep's eyes on her, and some 
day or other they get married, but without any of those 
innocuous preliminary processes with which we are 
familiar in drawing-room life. There is another point 
to notice. So far as unmarried ladies are concerned, 
flirting is almost a national characteristic. 

Flirts are of many kinds as well as degrees. The two 
principal are the flirt intellectual and the flirt sen- 
timental. The first is a rarer and decidedly nobler 
specimen of the family. In so far as the subject matter 
over which she flirts is superior to that which is the sta- 
ple of her feebler sister, she herself may be considered 
superior to the latter. Science, literature, and agreeable 
30* x 



354 FLIRTATIONS. 

conversation furnish a more valid excuse for flirting than 
vapid scandal and watery sentiment. Miss Minerva 
certainly devotes herself too much to the young poet; 
but then genius is an object which deserves to be courted. 
It is a pity, perhaps, that she talks quite so long or so 
often with the distinguished African traveler, but it is 
the thirst for information which keeps her at his side. 
When she makes a dead set at the wit of the day, it is to 
enjoy his bon mots, and afterward to record them in her 
diary. Her interest in photography is something more 
than a pretext for open-air flirtation. If she dabbles in 
botany or geology, it is not a mere love for botanically or 
geologically devoted sons. Even if it were, such means 
would to some extent justify the end ; for as an Enfield 
rifle is superior to a broomstick, so hammers, lenses, 
and chemicals are worthier weapons for the conquest 
of a husband than languishing looks and idle babble. 

There is no similarly redeeming feature about the flirt 
sentimental. She is altogether a poor creature. Her only 
idea of business is to trade in a weak manner upon her 
own feelings. She is full of secrets and trivial confidences. 
She is always submitting small metaphysical problems 
to the consideration of her male acquaintance. She has 
a perennial supply of petty cases of conscience to lay be- 
fore her moustached confessors. Will Mr. Jones tell her 
whether she is very wrong to prefer her friends to her 
relatives — Gregorian chants to Anglican, a coupe to a 
barouche ? Does he agree with her that it is better to 
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? 
Can he explain why she is never merry when she hears 
sweet music ? All which queries the gallant man is as 
competent to answer as to write a treatise on the origin 
of evil or the topography of the moon. A married flirt 
of this type may safely go farther and pass herself off 



FLIRTATIONS. 355 

as a blighted being. For her the world is an arid desert 
in which she is ever yearning for sympathy. Fixing her 
melancholy, stag-like eyes on yours, she darkly hints that 
her home is not happy, that she is not appreciated, that 
she has been the victim of some foul parental con- 
spiracy. The only compensation for all this is a train 
of youthful adorers. 

Another species is the religious or philanthropic flirt. 
No one can have watched the relations which exist be- 
tween the bachelor clergyman and his flock without be- 
coming conscious of her existence. On the celibacy of the 
clergy depends, we fear, even in Protestant countries, a 
great part of the organization of benevolent enterprises. 
That female enthusiasm which finds its expression in the 
votive slipper languishes and dies in presence of the min- 
ister whose quiver is full. With the failure of the slip- 
per-crop comes the collapse of the Dorcas meetings, a 
slackening in the efforts of the Scripture-readers, a pain- 
ful indifference to district visiting. Those errands of 
mercy which somehow or other used generally to lead 
past the Rev. Cyril's door are discontinued. No more 
delicious tete-a-tetes in his study, for the purpose of re- 
claiming Biddy Brown from the snare of the Ranters. 
No more blending of soprano voices with his cathedral 
tenor at the choral union. Upon the school inspector 
she opens her batteries with tremendous effect. What 
a pretty timidity she manifests in his presence ! and how 
multifarious the points on which she wants his advice ! 
What a flutter of gratification when the dear creature 
takes up the needlework and says something oracular 
about the button-holes ! But the greatest prize of all is 
a real live missionary. If he is black, so much the bet- 
ter. She hangs on his tales of moving incident like an- 
other Desdemona. She is never tired of hearing from 



356 FLIRTATIONS. 

his lips about Abbeokouta and the king of Dahomey. 
In short, she is within certain limits very catholic in her 
flirting propensities. She does not scruple to indulge 
them whenever she finds a man who may be fairly con- 
sidered to be doing good in his generation. 

Then there are quiet flirts and demonstrative flirts ; 
flirts of the subtle sort whose practice is made by the ej^es 
alone, by the manner, by the tender little sigh, by the 
bend of the head and the wave of the hand, to give 
pathos and point to the otherwise harmless word ; and 
flirts of the open and rampant kind, who go up quite 
boldly toward the point, but who never reach it, taking 
care to draw back in time before they really cross the 
border. This is the kind which, as the flirt male, does 
incalculable damage to the poor little fluttering doves to 
whom it is as a bird of prey, handsome, bold, and cruel; 
but this is the kind which has unlimited success, using 
as it does that immense moral leverage we call " tantal- 
izing," for ever rousing hopes and exciting expectations, 
and luring on as an ignis fatuus lures one on across the 
marsh, in the vain belief that it will bring us to our 
haven at last. 

Then there is the race of male flirts great in the way 
in which they manage to insinuate things without com- 
mitting themselves to positive statements. They gener- 
ally contrive to give the impression of some mysterious 
hindrance by which they are held back from full and 
frank confession. They hint at fatal bonds, unfortunate 
attachments, at a past that has burnt them up or with- 
ered them up, at any rate that has prevented their future 
from blossoming in the direction in which they would 
fain have had it blossom and bear fruit. They sketch 
out very vaguely the outlines of some thrilling romance ; 
a few, of the Byronic breed, add the suspicion of some 



FLIRTATIONS. 357 

dark and melancholy crime as a further enhancement ; 
and when they have got the girl's pity and the love that 
is akin to pity, then they cool down scientifically, never 
creating any scandal, never making any rupture, never 
coming to a moment when awkward explanations can be 
asked, but cooling nevertheless, till the thing drops of its 
own accord, dies out from inanition, and they are free to 
carry their sorrows and their mysteries elsewhere. Some 
men spend their lives in this kind of thing, and find 
their pleasure in making all the nice women they know 
madly or sentimentally in love with them; and if by 
chance any poor moth who has burned her wings makes 
too loud an outcry, the tables are turned against her 
dextrously, and she is held up to public pity — contempt 
would be a better word — as one who has suffered herself 
to love too well and by no means wisely, and who has 
run after a Lothario who would not let himself be caught. 

Then there are certain men who flirt only with mar- 
ried women, and others who flirt only with girls ; and 
the two pastimes are as different as tropica] sunlight and 
our northern moonshine. Some are content with cousin- 
ship only — which, however, breaks down quite sufficient 
fences — and some are " dearest friends," no more, and 
find that an exceedingly useful centre from which to 
work onward and outward. For, if anything will do on 
which to hang a discourse, so will any relationship or 
adoption serve the ends of flirting, if it be so willed. 

To a well-developed affair of this order the aids of 
dress are, perhaps, the most common and the least noble, 
but they are almost all that some people have to rely on 
or hope to possess, so they must needs be mentioned, 
though we assign to them the lowest place. Fashions 
come and go and reappear in their stubborn vitality, and 
each trick of dress has in divers ages had its separate 



358 FLIRTATIONS. 

potency in conquest. " To what end are these crisped 
false hairs, painted faces, such a composed gait, with not 
a step awry ?" demands an ancient satirist. " Why," 
asks Lucien, " all these pins, pots, glasses, ointments, 
irons, combs, bodkins, setting-sticks ?" 

Personal appearance stands by some degrees higher 
than dress. "Fair sparkling eyes, white necks, coral 
lips, rose-colored cheeks," are, of themselves, potent enti- 
cers ; and when to these are added " a comely, well-com- 
posed look and pleasing gesture and carriage," Montaigne 
deems them far more forcible than such articles as " curi- 
ous needlework, spangles, pendants, tiffanies." As for 
gestures, they must be used in moderation; they are but 
the dumb show and prognostics of greater things. " 'Tis 
not the eye but the carriage of it that causeth effects." 
The eye is the silent orator, the secret interpreter which 
wounds, heals, questions, explains, affirms, denies, and 
promises. It opens negotiations, makes appointments 
and annuls them, signs treaties, sues for peace, proclaims 
war, and many a capitulation has been offered and ac- 
cepted by a glance of which the most observing by- 
standers remained in profound ignorance. Laughter 
should be rare, for flirtation is not a subject for mirth, 
but a high exercise of capacity ; nor must smiles be too 
frequent, but, when exchanged, should be full of intelli- 
gence and suggestion. They are, as it were, the pass- 
word without which no counter-signal can be returned, 
but, therefore, not to be perpetually offered for the in- 
formation alike of friend and foe. It is impossible for 
the expression of the features to be too highly refined 
and significant, and for this reason men who wear beards, 
or, as an old writer puts it, "who now do clothe their 
pretty mouths with hair," are bereft of one-half their 
power and retain only the preaching of the eye. The 



FLIRTATIONS. 359 

mouth is one of the most characteristic and important 
features of the face, but all that it can indicate of power, 
persuasion, firmness, content, or displeasure is entirely 
lost and unproductive. If men, like the hero of certain 
novels, rely much on biting their lips, writhing their 
mouths, and setting their teeth, so far as effect is con- 
cerned, they may as well set these last, as the} r do their 
razors, in the privacy of their own dressing-room. 

Conversation should be brilliant and incisive if there 
is sufficient wit, and on rare occasions — if they do not 
arise, they must be created— serious. It must frequent- 
ly be intensely personal and monopolizing, but some- 
times it may turn on abstract subjects in which emotion 
or the appearance of it may be permitted. Tenderness 
is allowable in the manner of speech, but not in the sub- 
ject matter of it. There is, of course, a fussy and osten- 
tatious and a quiet way of doing all things. Silence is 
often more eloquent than speech, and a sigh will say 
more than a smile, but it may in general be affirmed that 
the woman who flirts with least sign or action, and the 
man who does the same thing with the smallest appear- 
ance of it, are the people who effect the most, and obtain 
the greatest enjoyment from their pastime. Some women 
can sit immovable and motionless while they flirt with 
half a dozen men at a time, but there is a looseness, even 
a want of decorum, about this proceeding which we are 
not prepared to commend. It dissipates the mind and 
prevents that purity and concentration of purpose which 
is inseparable from the attainment of great results ; it 
likewise attracts attention and creates enmity ; but they 
are quiet flirts, after all, who are, as the phrase is, the 
most dangerous, or, as we should term them, the most 
skillful and meritorious. 

But what is flirting? Is sitting away in corners, talk- 



360 FLIRTATIONS. 

ing in low voices, and looking personally affronted if 
any unlucky outsider comes within earshot, flirting? 
Not necessarily, It is just -possible that Henry may be 
telling Angelina all about his admiration for her sister 
Grace, or Angelina may be confessing to Henry what 
Charley said to her last night, which makes, her lower 
her eyes as she is doing now, and play with the fringe 
of her fan so nervously. May be, if not likely. So that 
sitting away in corners and whispering together is not 
necessarily flirting, though it may look like it. Is dan- 
cing all the " round " dances together ? This goes for 
decided flirting in the code of the ball-room. But if the 
two keep well together? If they are really fond of 
dancing, as one of the fine arts combining science and 
enjoyment, they would dance with each other all night, 
though outside the " marble halls " they might be deadly 
enemies — Montagus and Capulets, with no echo of Romeo 
and Juliet to soften their mutual dislike. So that not 
even dancing together often er than is absolutely neces- 
sary is unmistakable evidence, any more than sitting 
away in corners, seeing that equal skill and keeping well 
in step are reasons enough for perpetual partnership, 
making all idea of flirtation unnecessary. 

In fact, there is no outward sign or symbol of flirting 
which may not be mistaken and turned round, because 
flirting is so entirely in the intention, and not in the 
mere formula, that it becomes a kind of phantasm, a 
Proteus, impossible to seize or to depict with accuracy. 
One thing, however, we can say — that taking gifts and 
attentions, offered with evident design and accepted with 
tacit understanding, may be certainly held as constitut- 
ing an important element of flirting. But this is flirting 
on the woman's side. And here you are being continu- 
ally taken in. Your flirt of the cunningly simple kind, 



FLIRTATIONS. 361 

who smiles so sweetly and seems so flatteringly glad to 
see you when you come, who takes all your presents 
and acted expressions of love with the most bewitching 
gratitude and effusion, even she, so simple as she seems 
to be, slips the thread and will not be caught if she does 
not wish to be caught. At the decisive moment when 
3 t ou think you have secured her, she makes a bound and 
is away ; then turns round, looks you in the face, and 
with many a tear and pretty asseveration will declare 
she never understood you to mean what you say you 
have meant all along ; and that you are cruel to dispel 
her dream of a pleasant and harmless friendship, and 
very wicked indeed because you press her for a decision. 
Yes, you are cruel, because you have believed her honest; 
cruel, because you did not see through the veil of flattery 
and insincerity in which she clothed her selfishness; 
cruel, because she was false. That is woman's logic 
when brought to book, and forced to confess that her 
pretended love was only flirting, and that she led you 
on to your destruction simply because it pleased her 
vanity to make you her victim. 

Then there are flirts of the open and rollicking kind, 
who let you go far, very far indeed, when suddenly they 
pull up and assume an offended air, as if you had will- 
fully transgressed known and absolute boundaries — ■ 
girls and women who lead you on, all in the way of good 
fellowship, to knock you over when you have got just 
far enough to lose your balance. That is their form of 
the art. They like to see how far they can make a man 
forget himself, and how much stronger their own delusive 
enticements are than prudence, experience, and common 
sense. And there are flirts of the artful and "still 
waters " kind, something like the male flirts spoken of 
just now; sentimental little pusses — perhaps pretty 

'61 



362 FLIRTATIONS. 

young wives with uncomfortable husbands — whose griefs 
have by no means soured or scorched, but just mellowed 
and refined, them. Or they may be of the sisterly class, 
creatures so very frank, so very sisterly and confiding and 
unsuspicious of evil, that really you scarcely know how 
to deal with them at all. And there are flirts of the 
scientific kind; women who have studied the art thor- 
oughly, and with the grave attention due to an art ; and 
who are adepts in the use of every weapon known — 
using each according to circumstances and the nature of 
the victim, and using each with deadly precision. From 
such may a kind Providence deliver us ! As the tender 
mercies of the wicked, so are the scientific flirts — the 
women and the men who play at bowls with human 
hearts, for simply the stakes of a whole life's happiness. 
We have a few words to say applicable to the whole 
family. It is from no wish to spoil the sport of any of 
our fair friends that we venture to remark that all flirt- 
ing on the part of the woman involves, in greater or less 
degree, a want of self-respect. It is an admission of 
weakness — an invitation to a man to say what he pleases 
with impunity. The flirt quits, as it were^her entrench- 
ments to go forth in quest of adventure. Thrown among 
the kindly and chivalrous, she fares well enough;- but 
kindness and chivalry are not universal, and woe to her 
if she some day fall in with a partner " flown with inso- 
lence and wine," or arouse the malignant tongue of 
jealousy. It is as well to remember the Rubicon which 
divides the aggravated flirtation from the indiscretion, 
if it be deep, is also narrow. But, worse than a fault, 
flirting is in nine cases out of ten, so far as the matri- 
monial chance is concerned, a blunder. In the tenth it 
is successful only because the flirt is clever or the flirtee 
silly. Of this we are very sure — that no woman should 



FLIRTATIONS. 363 

venture to flirt unless possessed of considerable strength 
of mind and force of character. Giddy heights require 
steady heads. When Opie was asked by a flippant 
youth what he mixed his colors with, he replied gruffly, 
"With brains, sir." Young ladies should abstain from 
flirting unless they have the same recipe. 

After all, in a social point of view, the flirt is much 
more pleasant than the prude. There is no greater in- 
fliction than to have to do the agreeable to a woman who 
is perpetuall} 7 standing on the defensive, who, when 
you sit down to talk, increases the distance between your 
chair and her own, and who looks as if she expected 
every moment that you were about to say or do some 
horrid thing. As well might you attempt some amiable 
passages with a hedgehog. The more airy and unem- 
barrassed your tone, the more she seems to bristle with 
precaution. Your sprightly nonsense is received with 
evident suspicion, your innocent sallies with uneasiness. 
You begin to think, from the half-frightened expression 
of your companion's face, that your looks must be flus- 
tered, your language intemperate, and that you have 
more of the Lothario in your outward man than you 
were ever aware of. Either you are annoyed or tempted 
to amuse yourself by shocking in good earnest such 
sensitive propriety. Then, and not before, you mentally 
acknowledge the debt of gratitude which society owes to 
the flirt. 

It used to be an old school-boy maxim that no real 
gentleman could be refused by a lady, because no gen- 
tleman could presume beyond his line of encouragement. 
A fortiori, no lady would or could give more encourage- 
ment than she meant. What are we to say then of our 
flirts if this maxim is true? Are they really "no gen- 
tlemen" and "no ladies," according to the famous 



364 



FLIRTATIONS. 



formula of the kitchen ? Perhaps it would be said so 
if gentlehood meant now, as it meant centuries ago, the 
real worth and virtue of humanity. For flirting with 
intent is a cruel, a false, and a heartless amusement ; 
and time was when cruelty and falsehood were essentially 
sins that vitiated all claims to gentlehood. And yet the 
world would be very dull without that innocent kind of 
nonsense which often goes by the name of flirting — that 
pleasant something which is more than mere acquaint- 
anceship and less than formal loverhood — that bright 
and animated intercourse which makes the hours pass 
so easily, yet which leaves no bitter pang of self-reproach 
— that indefinite and undefinable interest by which the 
one man or the one woman becomes a kind of microcosm 
for the time, the epitome of all that is pleasant and of 
all that is lovely. The only caution to be observed is, 
not to so too far. 









QUIET ATTENTIONS. 

ITH women the great business of life is love," 
says Hazlitt ; " and they generally make a mis- 
take in it." I wish to know why this latter clause 
is true. 

In the first place, I believe there is at bottom a 
very subtle but unacknowledged antagonism between 
man and woman, which has been scotched somewhat 
by the progress of civilization and chivalry, but which 
is too deeply rooted not to crop up here and there in all 
sorts of unexpected forms. There is very little true 
trust and tenderness existing between them ; but there 
is an almost universal disbelief in the strength and en- 
durance of each other's emotions, whenever those emo- 
tions trench upon the sphere of affection. Read any 
man's writings, from Chaucer or Shakespeare downward, 
and you find running through them a scoff and sneer, 
scarcely conscious, and therefore the more natural, 
against the idea of real constancy and love in woman. 
Listen to any woman's talk, and sooner or later she will 
let slip the melancholy sentiment of the Psalmist, "All 
men are liars," or at least that milder rendering of the 
same passage, ^All men fail me." There is as much an- 
tagonism implied between " male and female " as between 

" Jew and Greek ; bond and free." 

31 * 365 



366 QUIET ATTENTIONS. 

There are two mistakes which women are apt to make 
in the outset of their business, which tend to a very 
pitiable bankruptcy. In a few cases she may remain 
perfectly unconscious of the advances of any lover until, 
after the lapse of months or even years, she is suddenly 
surprised and confounded by an utterly unexpected 
offer. Charlotte Bronte, who, as one would suppose, was 
all aflame with the passion which pervades her writings, 
was loved for years without suspecting it, until "like 
lightning," she says, " it flashed upon me." But this 
mistake is at once less common and less perilous than 
its opposite. What can surpass the absurdity, the cha- 
grin, the mortification, the heart-sickness and heart-sore- 
ness of a woman who has buoyed herself upon the hope 
that advances are being made to her, when in truth the 
supposed suitor has no serious intentions at all ? 

What are advances, and when are men making them? 
"A course of small, quiet attentions," says Sterne, "not 
so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as to be misunder- 
stood, with now T and then a look of kindness, and little 
or nothing said upon it." That is a man's answer to my 
question; the simplest and most straightforward I can 
find, after a long and careful research. And what a depth 
of cunning and discretion there is in it ! Not too pointed, 
that the man's honor may not be bound by them ; and 
not too vague to leave the woman fancy-free. " A look 
of kindness now and then, and little or nothing said 
upon it," is delicious, inimitable. It gives him so much 
vantage, and allows her so full a scope for the active play 
of the imagination. "Small, quiet attentions!" How 
small may they be, and how quiet? In what way are 
we to make sure that these delicate attentions are being 
paid to us ? 

Would" Sterne, or will men in general, admit that 



QUIET ATTENTIONS. 367 

squeezing the hand is one of these small, quiet atten- 
tions which have great meaning in them? There is 
historical and royal evidence in affirmation of it,. Dart- 
mouth's old scandal of Edward Montagu losing his post 
of chamberlain to Charles the Second's Catharine : " Her 
Majesty asked the king (having never had an admirer 
before nor after) what people meant by squeezing the 
hand. The king (no incompetent authority) told her 
' love.' ' Then, 1 said she, ' Mr. Montagu loves me might- 
ily.' Upon which he was turned out." Yet what woman 
would dare risk her happiness or her success in business 
upon so trivial an advance as this ? Even that more 
significant attention of keeping the hand in a warm, 
pleasant, lingering custody, which is quiet and pointed 
enough, and so paid as to make it difficult to notice 
favorably, save by a drooping of the eyelids and a more 
conscious flushing of the cheeks ; even this, one knows, 
is no more to be relied upon than is a reed to be leant 
upon in a tempest. 

What about correspondence ? It is so pleasant to write 
to a woman ; such an escape-valve for the compressed 
sentiment, which all a man's dealings with the world 
cannot entirely consume, that one ought not to clog this 
delicate interchange of thought and feeling with the re- 
sponsibility of being an advance. It is no more than an 
element of Platonic friendship. The German girl, Meta 
Klopstock, describes the progress of her Platonic corre- 
spondence with the poet in one of her charming letters 
written in English to Richardson. " It was a strong 
hour," she writes, " the hour of Klopstock's departure. 
He wrote soon after, and from that time our correspond- 
ence began to be a very diligent one. I sincerely be- 
lieved my love to be friendship. I spoke with my friends 
of nothing but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They 



368 QUIET ATTENTIONS. 

rallied me, and said I was in love. I rallied them again, 
and said they must have a very friendshipless heart if 
they had no idea of friendship to a man as well as to a 
woman. My friends found as much love in Klopstock's 
letters as in me. I perceived it likewise, but I would 
not believe it. At the last Klopstock said plainly that 
he loved, and I startled, as for a wrong thing. I answered 
that it was no love, but friendship ; we had not seen one 
another enough for love, as if love must have more time 
than friendship !" Richardson himself declares, in his 
oracular manner, " Platonic love is Platonic nonsense ; 
'tis the fly buzzing about the blaze till its wings are 
scorched. Age, old age, and nothing else, must establish 
the barriers of Platonic love." Yet I wonder how many 
letters to-night's post will scatter up and down through 
the country which shall be just as vague and as pointed 
as Sterne would have them to be? 

"No kissing!" said Goethe's first love, the little mil- 
liner, Gretchen ; " no kissing ! that is so vulgar ; but let 
us love, if we can !" No doubt the girl, two years the 
senior, was laughing at the impassioned boy, yet there 
was a rare refinement in her distaste. Wieland, the 
German novelist, must have been a sublime lover. He 
was perfectly convinced that love is born with the first 
sigh, and expires in a certain degree with the first kiss. 
Zimmerman asked the young lady to whom he was at- 
tached, when it was that Wieland saluted her for the first 
time? "Wieland," replied the amiable girl, "did not 
kiss my hand for the first four years of our acquaintance." 
Of the same transcendental order must have been that 
Puritan divine who, after a betrothal of seven years, 
asked a blessing and returned thanks over the first kiss, 
and was married shortly afterward, it was added. These 
were betrothed kisses, it is true; but are there no experi- 



QUIET ATTENTIONS. 369 

mental ones? Down in innocent places in the country, 
where it is rather rural than vulgar ? The excitement of 
being kissed unexpectedly is great and rare, for no man 
can take a girl by surprise twice, the memory of a first 
kiss lingering in her mind for ever afterward. There is, 
let it be confessed frankly, a certain kind of triumphant 
disquietude in having been kissed, a grazing of the skin 
of the conscience, and a tiny sting left in it, which gives 
zest to the stolen caress ; but still we say, with Gretchen, 
" No kissing ; that is so vulgar !" 

Teaching ; the most subtle of all quiet attentions. Sit- 
ting side by side, with heads almost touching one another, 
bent above the same page ; leaves turned over by fingers 
that cannot help but meet sometimes ; words in a foreign 
language shyly echoed by the pupil, who only half 
knows their meaning ; willful mistakes made to lure the 
tutor into chidings which need a hundred flatteries to 
unsay them ; grave digressions to display the learning 
of the one and the sweet reverence of the other. " Nothing 
can conduce to a more beautiful union," says Goethe. 
But after all, does it often conduce to union ? There is 
one question which the teacher alone can ask; the schol- 
ar, like a ghost, can only speak when the spell of silence 
is broken, and nine times out of ten he goes away, leav- 
ing that one question unasked. 

A maiden friend of mine, who has been wooed eleven 
times, and knows a good deal about it, assures me that 
the only attentions to be taken notice of, and relied upon, 
are those that touch the pocket. " When your Platonic 
friend," she says, " begins to offer gifts, costly according 
to his means, depend upon it the affair has become a 
business with him as well as with you." The American 
missionary, Judson, possessed a valuable watch, which 
he bestowed in succession before marriage upon each of 



370 QUIET ATTENTIONS. 

his three wives ; when he offered it to the third object of 
his affections, he stated that it had the desirable property 
of always returning to him, bringing the beloved wearer 
with it. Be sure the wise and prudent man would never 
have parted with his watch unless he had been firmly 
persuaded that he was making a good investment, safe to 
bring him in large and clear returns. When a costly 
offering is laid upon the shrine the offerer means wor- 
ship. 

Some men much need Sydne}' Smith's reminder of 
the Deluge, " when a great alteration was made in the 
longevity of mankind. He should gaze at Noah, and be 
brief!" Of all women she is most to be pitied who has 
a slow-paced suitor ; he is worse than a retrograding one. 

Once I had the charge of a four-year old laddie, to 
whom I chatted, as women who love children are wont 
to do, of all things that came into my own mind, grave 
or gay, fun or earnest, fairy tales or Bible histories. One 
afternoon the fancy seized me to teach him the following 
stanza, which he learned by heart, with that profound 
gravity, almost amounting to gloom, so often shown by 
children : 

" 'Tis good to be merry and wise ; 
'Tis good to be honest and true ; 
'Tis good to be off with the old love 
Before you are on with the new." 

" Oh, auntie !" cried the boy, when he had mastered it, 
" what a pretty verse ! I should so like to say it with 
my prayers !" I was too orthodox then to consent 
to that; but very often since I have thought I might 
have done worse than teach him to blend ideas of 
honesty and truth in love with the habit of worship. 
The knight of olden times vowed fidelity to God and 
his lady. Perfect truth here would be perfect wisdom. 



QUIET ATTENTIONS. 



371 



Love only becomes a business to women after they have 
made some bitter discoveries ; until then it is little less 
than the religion of life to them. Goethe, that prince of 
philanderers, has given us a glimpse of the retribution 
that overtook him. " I had wounded," he said, " the 
most beautiful heart to its very depths, and the period of 
a gloomy repentance, with the absence of a refreshing 
love to which I had grown accustomed, was most agon- 
izing — nay, unsupportable." I will conclude with some 
wise counsel from the same Sterne who gives so crafty a 
definition of "small, quiet attentions:'' "Be open, be 
honest ; give yourself for what you are ; conceal nothing, 
varnish nothing; and if those weapons will not do, bet- 
ter not conquer at all, than conquer for a day ; when the 
dream is over, and we awake in the morning, it will ever 
be the same story : And it came to pass, behold it was 
Leah !" 




CHOOSING A WIFE. 




lE have had various lectures from our social teachers, 
and are likely to have many more, upon the ad- 
vantages of marriage, but we seldom learn from 
these disquisitions any rule or system which 
might serve to help a bachelor in choosing a part- 
ner for life. Women are talked of in certain quarters 
with as much freedom as if they were horses ; but al- 
though it is possible to gather a refreshing knowledge of 
their vices and follies, we are unable to pick up as much 
information on their better qualities as would serve to be 
of use. Nothing is easier than to tickle, the prepared 
fancies of young gentlemen at clubs and elsewhere by 
suggestive articles on the dress and equipments of ladies. 
It may be done week after week in a manner which com- 
bines a knowledge of fashion journals with some study 
of the Medical Reporter. Yet the amusement of woman- 
baiting, though venerable enough, is, we think, coming 
to an end. Laugh as we may at the efforts of the sex 
to get wider spheres of occupation and wider ranges of 
thought, we find ourselves compelled to believe that 
their impulses in these directions proceed from a legiti- 
mate ambition which must force itself upon the attention 
of intellectual men to a practical extent. 

372 



CHOOSING A WIFE. 3<3 

At the same time, during the period of transition there 
will he marrying and giving in marriage as usual, and 
the man ahout to select a wife must be content to make 
the best choice he can out of the materials he finds 
at hand. His difficulties are many and serious. If he 
regards marriage not as a luxury, but as a necessary of 
life (and there are plenty who, rightly or wrongly, do so 
regard it), he can scarcely bestow too much care and atten- 
tion upon the step he contemplates. Sentiment, we know, 
is almost subversive of the judgment. Here, then, is a 
difficulty which meets him on the threshold. He has 
been told and he has read that as a preface to matrimony 
there is an operation called " falling in love " to be gone 
through first. It meets him on all sides that affection 
and a little romance is an indispensable condition for the 
proper fulfillment of his destiny, and in nine cases out of 
ten he becomes sentimental and affectionate before he 
has reckoned up in a cool and sensible way the value of 
the woman he desires to wed. His blindness increases 
during the process of courtship, which is eminently 
calculated to make him a fool ; and it is only when he is 
finally committed to a miserable blunder that he opens 
his eyes to the extent of the calamity which has befallen 
him. 

All this is very trite, and has been harped upon by 
writers as often as the " Old Hundredth " has been 
ground out of a barrel organ, but at the present time 
there is an excuse for reproducing the sermon. Does not 
the danger, in a great measure, arise from the want of 
more social acquaintance and familiarity among men and 
women ? What does a man learn of his future wife by 
waltzing with her or listening to music with her through 
a fashionable season? Mothers object, it is true, to long 
engagements, but how frequently have these engagements 

32 



374 CHOOSING A WIFE. 

saved years of mischief and immorality to those who 
have entered upon them and broken them off? It is 
surely better that people should know each other before 
marriage rather than, to use an expressive phrase, find 
each other out after it. If a girl is suitable, her disposi- 
tions will not wear off upon acquaintance ; if a man is 
eligible, his qualities ought to have sufficient stay in 
them to last for more than six months. 

It is not without some degree of cynical wisdom that 
marrying men — men determined to marry at any risk- 
endeavor to shirk one hazard at least by selecting a 
woman of a weak and pliable nature. They trust to 
mould what she has of mind to their own, and hope to 
find her turn out satisfactorily after careful and cautious 
training. The experiment often succeeds, and the result 
is a mild gooseberry-wine felicity which suits the tastes 
and tempers of those who care to indulge in it. Such 
women can be thoroughly domesticated, become consci- 
entious mothers, and retain for an indefinite period a 
sense of pleasure at nursing a new baby. Their hus- 
bands escape storms of temper or gusts and squalls of 
feeling, and secure for themselves a companionship which, 
if not very elevating, is, at least, tolerable, even when the 
first bloom of it has worn off. Indeed, it may be that, 
in the present condition of the female mind, this plan is 
the safest that a bachelor can follow. A marriage of 
souls is an uncommon and an unlikely thing. Waiting 
for congenial partners is not unfrequently a dreary and 
a disappointing trial of patience. The man who under- 
takes to make his wife has chances in his favor above 
the man who hopes to find one ready made for him; 
and although it is impossible, on the principle, to ren- 
der the prepared lady quite as perfect as the woman 
born to please the more fastidious mind, the relative 



, CHOOSING A WIFE. 375 

proportion of happiness expected may balance the dif- 
ference. 

Putting aside, as a distracting element, the emotional 
part of marriage and its preliminaries, there are two or 
three plain matter-of-fact things which might assist peo- 
ple in the choice of wives. There is, for instance, great 
virtue in good breeding. It is not alone well that a girl 
should have gone to first-class schools and have lived in 
a fair style, but it is eminently in her favor that her con- 
nexions are of an old and refined stock. The saying that 
a man only marries his wife, and not her relations, is 
only true to a very limited extent. He becomes one of 
the family the moment he joins hand with a daughter of 
it at the altar, and he takes a certain share in it, for bet- 
ter or for worse, in good or in evil report, for the rest of 
his life. Besides, there is no getting over the fact that 
girls of some ancestry will, in a thousand unconscious 
traits, exhibit the advantage they possess. 

Another matter-of-fact consideration in wife-choosing 
is this — that a man ought to marry a woman at least ten 
years younger than himself. There are many sound 
reasons for such a practice, and one of the most forcible, 
is that the sexes do not bear their ages equally, and that 
if a man of twenty-two marries a lady of twenty-two, at 
forty-four he may still look young and be young, while 
his wife is a faded woman, and possibly both cross and 
jealous at the contrast which their respective appear- 
ances suggest. Numbers of cases at the divorce court 
illustrate with stern emphasis the use of a disparity of 
years between man and wife. Of course such a rule 
should be drawn within limits. A very old man had, 
perhaps, better not marry at all ; but if he is determined 
on embittering the lives of his relations, the venerable 
custom of an alliance with his housekeeper is as sensible 



376 CHOOSING A WIFE. 

a one as he could adopt, were it not for the drawback of 
the association which he enters into with the housekeep- 
er's connexions. 

The subject of money, as a matrimonial consideration, 
is the most difficult to lay down a law upon. It may be 
taken for granted that girls are not in the least grateful 
for being married without it. It is human nature, mas- 
culine as well as feminine nature, to believe that we are 
accepted and chosen for our intrinsic merits ; and a por- 
tionless girl is pretty sure to believe that her attractions 
in other respects quite account for the circumstance of a 
husband not wanting a dower with her. But still, to 
put the question on the low ground which we have ven- 
tured to go upon throughout, it is, unquestionably, not 
the best policy to get married simply for a fortune. The 
cases where men have paid off their debts by this process 
do not look well when closely investigated. After the 
debts are paid off there is still the wife to live with, who 
will never forget the boon she has conferred. A suitable 
woman with money has an additional charm, especially 
if she belongs to a class who do not regard it as the one 
aim, object, and result of life. 

A man who thinks too much about marriage may 
never get married, and therefore it may be dangerous to 
multiply speculations on the point. Besides, one can 
tell what might happen him in this respect no more 
than one can foresee being knocked over by a cab or 
struck by lightning. It is rather against our theory of 
reducing matrimony to some sort of science to have to 
admit that those gentlemen who approach it after that 
fashion are often found tumbling into the most reckless 
engagements. This comes, as we noted, from the admis- 
sion of sentiment, which plays Harlequin with our more 
sober thoughts and sends us whisking as Clown or Pan- 



CHOOSING A WIFE. 377 

taloon after Columbine. Still, a little knowledge on this 
score is not dangerous. 

Love-matches will no doubt be as plentiful as ever, 
and continue to assert the grand truth of human weak- 
ness and imperfection ; but even a love-match is not in- 
consistent with a small amount of sensible reflection, 
unless the contracting personages are of weak minds 
and more or less incapable of managing their own affairs. 
The poets must have their subjects, and there is cause for 
suspecting that novelists and poets keep what is called 
love in the market, just as the publishers maintain Christ- 
mas and stationers perpetuate valentines. There is no 
objection to the billing and cooing if the turtle-doves 
leave off for a few lucid intervals. Then they may be 
able to decide whether they are for undertaking a very 
solemn and a very serious business — a business which 
will test severely their endurance, their fidelity, and the 
capacity they respectively possess for fulfilling the deep- 
est obligation they can incur to society. 

32* 




MESALLIANCES. 




jr HE French system of parents arranging the mar- 
riage of their children without the consent of the 
'• girl even "being asked, but assumed as granted, is 
not so wholly monstrous as many people believe. 
It seems to be founded on the idea that, given a 
young girl who has been kept shut up from all possibility 
of forming the most shadowy attachment for any man 
whatsoever, and present to her as her husband a suffi- 
ciently well-endowed and nice-looking man with whom 
come liberty, pretty dresses, balls, admiration, and social 
standing, the chances are that she will love him and 
live with him in tolerable harmony to the end of the 
chapter ; and this idea is by no means wholly beside the 
truth, as we find it in practice. The parents, who are 
better judges of character and circumstance than the 
daughter can possibly be, are supposed to take care that 
their future son-in-law is up to their standard, whatever 
that may be, and that the connection is not of a kind to 
bring discredit on their house ; and on this, and the 
joint income as the solid basis, they build the not very 
unreasonable hypothesis that one man is as good as 
another for the satisfaction of a quite untouched and 
virginal fancy, and that suitable external conditions go 

378 



MESALLIANCES. 379 

farther and last longer than passion. They trust to the 
force of instinct to make all square with the affections, 
while they themselves arrange for the smooth running of 
the social circumstances; and they are not far out in 
their calculations. 

The young people of the two lonely lighthouse isl- 
ands, who made love to each other through telescopes, 
are good examples of the way in which instinct simu- 
lates the impulse which calls itself love, when there are 
two or three instead of one to look at ; for, we may be 
quite sure that, had the lighthouse island youth been 
John instead of James, fair instead of dark, garrulous 
instead of reticent, short and fat instead of tall and 
slender, the lighthouse island girl would have loved him 
all the same, and would have quite believed that this 
man was the only man she ever could have loved, and 
that her instinctive gravitation was her free choice. The 
French system of marriage, then, based on this accom- 
modating instinct, works well for women who are not 
strongly individual, not inconstant by temperament, and 
not given to sentimentality. 

But, seeing that all women are not merely negative, 
and that passions and affections do sometimes assert 
themselves inconveniently, the system has had the effect 
of making society lenient to the little follies of married 
women, unless too strongly pronounced — partly because 
the human heart insists on a certain amount of free will, 
which fact must be recognized ; but partly, we must re- 
member, because of the want of the young lady element 
in society. In England and America where girls are let 
loose early, we have free-trade in flirting ; consequently, 
we think that all that sort of thing ought to be done 
with before marriage, and that, when once a woman has 
made her choice and put her neck under the yoke, she 



380 MESALLIANCES. 

ought to stick to her bargain, and loyally fulfill her self- 
imposed engagement. 

It is only when we bring the circumstances home to 
ourselves that we realize the immense importance of the 
social element ; and how, in this complex life of ours, 
we are unable to move in a single line independent of 
all it touches. Imagine a fine old family with a son-in- 
law who ate peas with his knife, said " you was " and 
" they is," and came down to dinner in a shooting-jacket 
and a bluebird's e}^e tied in a wisp about his throat ! 
He might be the possessor of all imaginable virtues, 
and, if occasion required, a very hero and a preux chev- 
alier, however rough ; but occasions in which a man can 
be a hero or a preux chevalier are rare, whereas dinner 
comes every day and the senses are never shut. The 
core within a conventionally ungainly envelope may be 
as sound as is possible to a corrupt humanity, but social 
life requires manners as well as principles ; and, though 
eating peas with a knife is not so bad as telling false- 
hoods, still we should all agree in saying — Give us truth 
that does not eat peas with its knife, let us have honesty 
in a dress-coat and pure-heartedness in a clean shirt, 
seeing that there is no absolute necessity for these sev- 
eral things to be disunited. 

The common opinion of society about unequal unions 
is not so unsound as some scornfully suppose it to 
be. The vapidity of a polite woman is bad, but the 
vapidity of a woman who is not polite is decidedly 
worse. A simpering unthinking woman with good 
manners is decidedly better than an unthinking woman 
with imperfect manners ; and if polish can spoil nature 
among one set of people, certainly among another set 
nature may be as much spoilt by lack of polish. It does 
not follow, from a person being indifferently well-bred, 



MESALLIANCES. 381 

that therefore she is profoundly wise and thoughtful and 
poetic, and capable of estimating the things of this world 
at their worth. Boys at college indulge in this too gen- 
erous fallacy. For grown-up men there is less excuse. 
They ought to know that obscure uneducated women 
are all the more likely on that account to fall short of 
magnanimity, self-control, self-containing composure, 
than girls who have grown up with a background of 
bright and gracious tradition, however little their edu- 
cation may have done to stimulate them to make the 
foreground like it. To have a common past is the first 
secret of happy association — a past common in ideas, 
sentiments, and growth, if not common in externa^ 
incidents. 

One reason why a cultivated man is wretched with a 
vapid woman is that she has not traveled over a yard of 
that ground of knowledge and feeling which has in truth 
made his nature what it is. But a woman in his own 
station is more likely to have shared a past of this sort 
than a woman of lower station. Mere community of 
general circumstances and surrounding does something. 
The obscure woman taken from inferior place has not 
the common past of culture, nor of circumstance either. 

Love-marriages made against the will of the parents 
before the character is formed and while the obligations 
of society are still unrealized, are generally mesalliances 
founded on passion and fancy only. A man or woman 
of mature age who knows what he or she wants may 
make a misalliance, but it is made with a full under- 
standing and deliberate choice ; and, if the thing turns 
out badly, they can blame themselves less for precipi- 
tancy than for wrong calculation. The man of fifty who 
marries his cook knows what he most values in women. 
It is not manners, and it is not accomplishments ; per- 



382 MESALLIANCES. 

haps it is usefulness, perhaps good temper ; at all events 
it is something that the cook has and that the ladies of 
his acquaintance have not, and he is content to take the 
disadvantages of his choice with its advantages. 

But the hoy who runs away with his mother's maid 
neither calculates nor sees any disadvantages. He mar- 
ries a pretty girl because her beauty has touched his 
senses, or he is got hold of by an artful woman who has 
bamboozled and fascinated him. It is only when his pas- 
sion has worn off that he awakes to the full consequences 
of his mistake, and understands then how right his parents 
were when they cashiered his pretty Jane as soon as they 
became aware of what was going on, and sent that artful 
Nancy to the right about — just a week too late ! It is the 
same with girls, but in a far greater extent. If a youth's 
mesalliance is a millstone around his neck for life, a 
girl's is simply destruction. The natural instinct with 
all women is to marry above themselves ; and we know 
on what physiological basis this instinct stands, and 
what useful social end it serves. And the natural in- 
stinct is as true in its social as in its physiological 
expression. 

A woman's honor is in her husband ; her status, her 
social life, are determined by his; and even the few 
women who — having made a bad marriage — have nerve 
and character enough to set themselves free from the 
personal association, are never able to thoroughly regain 
their maiden place. There is always something about 
them that clogs and fetters them; always a kind of aura 
of a doubtful and depressing kind that surrounds and 
influences them. If they have not strength to free 
themselves, they never cease to feel the mistake they 
have made until the old sad process of degeneration is 
accomplished, and the " grossness of his nature" has 



MESALLIANCES. 383 

had strength to drag her down. ' After a time, if her 
ladyhood has been of a superficial kind only, a woman 
who has married beneath herself may ease down into 
her groove and be like the man she has married ; if, 
however, she has sufficient force to resist outside influ- 
ences, she will not sink, but she will never cease to suffer. 
She has sinned against herself, her class, and her natural 
instincts; and so has done substantially a worse thing 
than has the boy who married his mother's maid. So- 
ciety understands this, and not unjustly, if harshly, pun- 
ishes the one while it lets the other go scot-free ; so that 
the woman who makes a mesalliance suffers on every side, 
and destroys her life almost as much as the woman who 
goes wrong. All this is as evident to parents and elders 
as that the sun shines. They understand the imperative 
needs of social life, and they know how fleeting the pas- 
sions of youth are, and how they fade by time and use 
and inharmonious conditions; and they feel that their 
first duty to their children is to prevent a mesalliance, 
which has nothing, and can have nothing, but passion 
for its basis. 

But novelists and poets are against the hard, dull dic- 
tates of w r orldly wisdom, and join in the apotheosis of 
love at any cost — all for love and the world well lost ; 
love in a cottage, with nightingales and honeysuckles 
as the chief means of paying the rent ; Libussa and her 
ploughman ; the princess and the swineherd, etc. And 
the fathers who stand out against the ruin of their girls 
by means of estimable men of inferior condition and 
with not enough to live on, are stony-hearted and cruel, 
while the daughters, who take to cold poison in the back 
garden if they cannot compass a secret honeymoon or 
an open flight, have all the sympathy and none of the 
censure. The cruel parent is the favorite whipping-boy 



384 MESALLIANCES. 

of poetry and fiction ; and yet, which is likely to be the 
better guide — reason or passion? experience or igno- 
rance ? calculation or impulse ? the maturity which can 
judge, or the youth which can only feel ? There would 
be no hesitation in any other case than that of love, but 
the love-instinct is generally considered to be superior 
to every other consideration, and to be obeyed as a divine 
voice, no matter at what cost or consequence. 

The ideal of life, according to some, is founded on 
early marriages. But men are slower in the final setting 
of their character than women, and one never knows 
how a young fellow of twenty or so will turn out. If 
he is devout now, he may be an infidel at forty ; if, under 
home influences, he is temperate and pure, when these 
are withdrawn he may become a rake of the fastest kind. 
His temper, morals, business power, ability to resist 
temptation, all are as yet inchoate and undefined; noth- 
ing is sure ; and the girl's fancy, that makes him perfect 
in proportion to his good looks, is a mere instinct deter- 
mined by chance association. A girl, too, has more 
character to come out than she has shown in her girl- 
hood. Though she sets sooner than men, she does not 
set unalterably, and marriage and maternity bring out 
depths of her nature as nothing else can. It is only 
common sense, then, to marry her to a man whose cha- 
racter is already somewhat formed, rather than to one 
who is still fluid and floating. It is all very well to talk 
of fighting the battle of life together, and welding to- 
gether b} 7 time. Many a man has been ruined by these 
detestable metaphors. 

The theory, partly true and partly pretty, is good 
enough in its degree ; and, so far as the welding goes, we 
weld together in almost all things by time. We wear 
our shoe till we wear it into shape and it ceases to pinch 



MESALLIANCES. 385 

us; but in the process we go through a vast deal of 
pain, and are liable to make corns that will last long 
after the shoe itself fits easily. We do not advocate the 
French system of marrying off our girls according to 
our own ideas of suitableness, and without consulting 
them ; but we not the less think that, of all fatal social 
mistakes, mesalliances are the most fatal, and, in the case 
of women, to be avoided and prevented at any cost short 
of a broken heart or a premature death. And even 
death sometimes would be better than the lifelong 
misery, the enduring shame and humiliation, of certain 
mesalliances. 

33 Z 




LOVERS' MISERIES. 




sjf CH liebe dich," says Heine in one of his heart- 
,4 breaking little songs, "so muss ich weinen bitter- 
^'i lich." Why must men weep bitterly when they 
love ? And why are men who know no more of 
love than a hedgehog knows of the geography of 
the moon led by a supreme instinct to associate love and 
misery? Why are plays that tell of love's mishaps 
and wrongs and sufferings more instantly popular than 
any other? Why does a love-story which has a sad 
ending linger in one's mind longer than one that ends 
with the customary perfume of orange-blossoms and the 
musical pop of champagne? It is a notorious fact that 
love is not the ruling passion of men and women. Dur- 
ing a certain time it is so ; but so, at certain times, are 
all passions ruling. The predominant passion of man- 
kind, however it ma} 7 be disguised, is individual advance- 
ment, whether the man aims at money, or fame, or power. 
Nor is it less certain, as we have said, that the miseries 
of love appeal more powerfully than the joys of love to 
the emotions. Who cares a brass button about Blanche 
or Emily after she is once in the carriage and being 
whipped off to the railway-station on her marriage- tour? 
The subtle aroma of romance has gone from her. She is 

386 



LOVEBS' MISERIES. 387 

like anybody else. She subsides into the ranks of those 
married couples who are judged not by their love-affairs 
but by their dinners. A year or two ago, when Blanche 
was known to be timidly writing letters to a young gen- 
tleman who dared not go near her house, one was inter- 
ested in her. Did we not hear stories of her mother 
having sought to bury her out of society ; how the 
young gentleman was seen to pass them both one morn- 
ing; how Blanche had looked piteously at her mother, 
who was inexorable ; how the young gentleman did ob- 
tain a secret interview, and bade Blanche a good-bye, and 
went off to California; how Blanche once burst into tears 
before a lot of people when his name was mentioned ; 
and how mutely and bravely she bore her tender misery 
until — until, lo ! the young gentleman returns wealthy 
and honored, wins over the mother, marries the daughter, 
and Blanche — as we say — retires into the cold shade of 
the commonplace, and we care to hear no more about 
her. 

But the question still remains : Why is love so con- 
stantly productive of misery? Why have we almost 
come to consider misery as the normal condition of love ? 
While " Maud with her exquisite face " was as yet only 
a vision to her future lover, did not he cry, 

" And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, 
The honey of poison-flowers, and all the measureless ill " ? 

The majority of the causes of love's miseries are trace- 
able to social sources— to those regulations of habit and 
conduct which society has found to be, in the long run, 
wise and prudent laws. It is no wonder that the sufferer, 
stung by the acuteness of his pain, turns round upon 
society and blasphemes in an emphatic manner; it is 
only when many years have past that he recognizes the 



388 LOVERS' MISERIES. 

necessity of those customs which temporarily wounded 
him. At first sight human nature and the laws of society 
seem to clash terribly. As a general rule, young men 
fall in love and wish to marry before they dare marry. 
The keenest passion of love is possible to a mere youth 
whose notions of the world and the requirements of life 
are so untrue as to be pathetically ludicrous. But what 
does he care for these things when the great revelation 
comes upon him? He steps into a new world, and the 
light of it blinds his eyes. There is for him nothing in 
the universe but a passion-flower of a face which turns 
toward him whichever way he turns and dazzles him 
with its awful lustre. He has severed the old bonds. 
The self-regarding audacity and shamefacedness of youth 
are gone from him. He assumes " the certain step of 
man," and has vague longings for a suit of armor, a 
horse, a sword, and an enemy. The exquisite truth of 
Dickens's description of David Copperfield's courtship of 
Dora is precisely one of those passages which silence us 
when we begin to complain of the great novelist's willful 
exaggerations and burlesques. The love of this period 
is called "calf-love." It is generally laU'ghed at. One 
does not at first see why one of the most powerful causes 
of human pain should be regarded as a joke ; but time 
dulls the sorrow of bygone years and shows us its dra- 
matic and humorous side. In one sense "calf-love" is, 
indeed, a species of measles, which few men escape, and 
the results of which seldom quit a man until he leaves 
the sphere of human recollections for ever behind him. 
For " calf-love " is almost always unfortunate, — we had 
almost said must be unfortunate. One obvious reason is 
that young men fall in love before they can afford to 
marry. 

As society stands, a man is expected to offer his wife 



LOVERS' MISERIES. 389 

something like the position which she has hitherto, 
under her parents' roof, enjoyed. At any rate, it may 
be assumed that a husband is expected to give his wife 
assurances of being able to keep her on this side of star- 
vation. Such considerations are banished from the glow- 
ing atmosphere of first love. Who doubts the constancy 
of woman at nineteen? The demands which a young 
man of nineteen makes upon the patience and common 
sense of the girl who has, by unfortunate circumstances, 
come to be fond of him, are splendidly, beautifully un- 
reasonable. She is to have absolute faith in his success 
in life. She is to wait patiently for years while he is 
absent from her endeavoring to secure the means or 
position which would render their marriage possible. 
He never reflects that a girl of eighteen is older than a 
young man of twenty-five. Her time for marriage has 
come, while his has not. There are other men of assured 
position and stability of thought whom she meets, whom 
she perhaps attracts. Edward is two hundred or two 
thousand miles off, fighting bravely, no doubt, for his 
prospective wife. She is surrounded by friends who are 
marrying and giving in marriage, while she has to re- 
main sad and single on the faith of Edward's coming 
for her, with the consciousness that every year her 
chances of marriage are decreasing. The great influence 
of her parents is certain to be directed against Edward's 
candidature. What can she do ? Perhaps at the very 
moment when a temporary quarrel is on between the 
lovers, a new lover, begirt by the splendid armor of 
wealth, appears on the scene, and carries off the maiden 
before she knows what she is about, with such conse- 
quences to Edward as we shall afterwards consider. 
This early love, also, is fruitful in miseries through its 
experience. Under ordinary circumstances, two young 

33* 



390 LOVERS' MISERIES. 

people, of opposite sexes and the same age, are sure to 
fall in love with each other if they are left much together. 
It is the most natural method of imparting a new interest 
to the ordinary business of taking walks to church and 
back, of spending the evening, and so forth. It is so 
very quiet and simple a revolution that young people 
are only awakened to its presence by some little incident 
that flashes the truth upon their frightened eyes. Then 
there is a brief moment of superhuman ecstasy, followed 
by mutual protestations, vows of constancy, and tearful 
adjurations to secresy. Week after week this blissful 
disquieting life goes on, and then Edward, turning de- 
spairing eyes toward her, bids her farewell, and goes off 
in quest of his fame and fortune. Which of them shall 
first find out the profound mistake and blunder that lay 
at the root of all this fleeting joy ? Which of them shall 
first awake one morning to find a new object installed 
in the chamber of the affections, which hitherto has only 
had an insufficient and temporary lodger? Perhaps 
Edward discovers that a very few weeks' absence has 
made a wonderful difference in his view of things ; and 
now, being able more impartially to scan" the unhappy 
Clara's disposition and temper, finds that these would 
never assort with his own. Or it is Clara, who sees in 
Edward's willfulness and fits of sudden liking and dis- 
liking an unhappy omen for the future ; and discovers 
that her heart does not cling to him with that perfect 
abandonment which would make marriage a safe experi- 
ment. Her letters become more subdued. He remon- 
strates. She gives the faintest possible indication of the 
truth. He rises up in the majesty of his wrath, curses 
womankind, takes to writing Byronic poetry, and giving 
himself headaches through excessive drinking, finally 
turns to business, marries, ten years after, a happy little 



LOVERS 1 MISERIES. 391 

woman, and settles down to living a comfortable and 
peaceful life. 

Now the tragic aspect of the case is this, that, however 
desirable for both parties may be the breaking of this 
unwise compact, the sharp sundering leaves a dreadful 
and ragged wound in at least one of the hearts concerned. 
Edward may reason with himself, then or afterwards, 
that the inconsistency about which he has so bitterly 
complained was a perfect godsend to him; but no 
amount of reason will remove the scar of the wound. 
The shattering of one's trust in this particular woman 
is like the collapse of the universe. There is no more 
faith, no more love, no more hope possible. Ruin and 
chaos encompass things, and the world is a cheat. Then 
the beautiful idyllic charm of those early days, the sweet 
memories that hang around them like a faint fragrance, 
the old visions and aspirations and tender confidences ! is 
it not entirely desolating that these should be buried 
for ever in the shadowy past ? These days will never be 
forgotten. In the evenings of the years to come he will 
sit and brood over them, and call up faces and scenes 
out of the flickering fire. A whiff of sea-air, or the 
scent of sweet-brier, will be fraught with a vague sadness 
to him, for these will be for ever associated with that 
bygone dream. By and by he will reach a clearer con- 
ception of the whole affair, and come to see that Clara's 
conduct was not so much the result of her own sinful 
willfulness or weakness or inconstancy, but the result 
of certain circumstances which were absolutely coer- 
cive. This tyranny of circumstance will for ever hang 
around him as an impenetrable mystery, a hateful, 
miserable thing ; and when some tragic story of love's 
misery is told him in a theatre or in a book, the sense 
of indignation and pity will make his heart swell with 



392 LOVERS' MISERIES. 

sympathy and his eyes fill with the bitter tears of long 
ago. 

Of course, it does not follow that these unwise early 
loves, which are such a common source of pain and 
painful memories, never lead to marriage. Sometimes 
the baby-lovers are precipitate, and marry in haste to 
repent at leisure. Some of the saddest domestic stories 
arise from these ill-considered and immature matches, 
which have at first so much tender romance about them. 
Every reader must know of some such case ; if he does 
not, so much the better. It is more pleasant to believe, 
when one sees two young lovers together, enjoying the 
beautiful emotions of the period, that we ought to wish 
them every success — that we ought to pray that the 
white flower of constancy be not nipped by early frost. 
As a matter of fact, the results of juvenile marriages are, 
as a rule, lamentable. The troubles of life crowd on the 
young couple before they have the fortitude to bear 
them, and the small household soon becomes dispirited, 
despondent, careless, reckless. The young wife is a mere 
bab}% good at kissing, but indifferent in matters of house- 
keeping. As Henri Miirger says of one of his heroines, 
"She mends love-quarrels very well, but linen very 
badly." Love may for a time reconcile a man to a slov- 
enly house, badly-cooked dinners, and general discom- 
fort; but ill time the husband — especially an impetuous 
young husband with an uncertain temper — will remon- 
strate. Now every woman is not a Dora, who finds a 
safe refuge in tears. The chances are that the young 
wife, smitten with the base ingratitude of him who but 
a little time before was vowing himself the happiest of 
men, bristles up and repays his remonstrance in kind. 
But it is not necessary to render such a match deplorable 
in its consequences, that quarreling should ensue. On 



LOVERS' MISERIES. 393 

the contrary, there is something far more saddening in 
the not uncommon spectacle of a household in which the 
young husband and wife struggle against the ennui and 
indifference that lie in wait for them; where he tries to 
conceal from her the fact that she is a hopeless burden 
upon energies which were never very strong — where she 
tries to make the best of straitened means, and hide 
from herself and him the despair that is settling upon 
her. Young ladies, don't refuse to marry a man because 
he is poor ; but be sure that his affection for you is some- 
thing more than a hasty impulse, and that he has some 
notion of the terrible responsibility of marriage. " When 
you are dead," says a French proverb, " it is for a long 
time." The proverb is leveled at would-be suicides; 
it might be modified so as to suit persons about to 
marry. 

But, it may be objected, all persons have not had an 
unfortunate love-affair in their youth ; there must be 
some further reasons for that universal sympathy with 
love's miseries which a pathetic story or drama never 
fails to touch. More persons have had an unfortunate 
love-affair in their youth than is commonly supposed. 
That a man should grow up to the point at which he 
marries without having been in love with somebody else 
before, is one of those miracles for which we have to 
accept the authority of works of fiction. And, once a 
man is married, it is not conducive to his domestic com- 
fort that he should rake up the ashes of the burnt-out 
fires and invite curious questions. Both for his own 
sake and the sake of those with whom he has established 
new relations, he prefers to preserve a judicious silence 
on such matters. While, however, a vast number of 
people — the majority of people, we should say — have 



394 LOVERS' MISERIES. 

painful or tender memories of early love that come to 
them unbidden at long intervals and odd times. 

The far more horrible miseries of love are the miseries 
of maturer years. The cruel circumstances of the boy- 
ish love become in time a sad, sweet memory which 
has something piteously tender about it; but a man's 
love is fraught with graver consequences for good or 
evil. To many of the social accidents or laws which are 
responsible for these human wrongs we cannot even 
allude here. The subject is too dangerous a one, so apt 
are people to mistake the intention of a writer in certain 
subjects. That a man, for example, should be in love 
with a married woman is properly held to be a disas- 
trous and undesirable thing ; but it is incredible to some 
people that a man may have incurred this misfortune in 
the most innocent manner. Suppose that the woman 
whom he loves cares nothing for him, and goes and mar- 
ries some one else ; is his love to drop down dead the 
very moment she enters the church door? " A shocking 
thing," cry our theorists, " that a man should love an- 
other man's wife. The moment she became A's wife, 
B had no right to think of her any more." ' What if B 
was unable to help thinking of her? If his affections 
were so admirably under control that he could at any 
time change their direction, would not he have ceased 
loving her long ago, when he discovered that his pursuit 
was hopeless? Werther must go on loving Charlotte, 
but he has no business to visit Charlotte's house, make an 
ass of himself, and annoy her husband. The best thing 
he can do is to start a newspaper ; then he will have 
plenty to think about. 

" And yet, if the two did look into each other's eyes, 
and each, in silence, in tragical renunciance, did find 
that the other was all too lovely," says Mr. Carlyle, mak- 



LOVERS' MISERIES. 395 

ing a guess at the relations between young Barbaroux 
and Madame Roland. That, however, was in the France 
of many years ago. The tragic circumstances of this 
kind of life — even in the modified form in which it really 
does exist — need not be included here, although they 
would swell the list of the miseries of love to an enor- 
mous extent. 

Half the miseries of love arise from the fact that voli- 
tion has so little power over the affections, and that a 
breach once made in love is scarcely ever repairable. 
What is constancy ? Suppose the gentleman returns to 
find his sweetheart unmarried. During his absence she 
has unwittingly, and perhaps unwillingly, lost much of 
the old affection she had for him. Perhaps she has be- 
come deeply interested in a third person; perhaps she 
has not ; in either case the old love for her lover is gone. 
She cannot help the fact ; he cannot repair it. But, says 
the world, constancy demands that she shall redeem her 
promise. Is it right or fitting that she should do so? 
Even if the man is willing to marry a woman who does 
not love him, ought she to permit the farce and peril the 
whole future happiness of both of them? Constancy in 
such a case is a crime and a blunder for which both are 
likely to suffer heavily. Once a woman's love is gone, 
all contingent promises should go with it. The com- 
monest thing for lovers to do is to swear tremendous 
vows of truth and loyalty, give all manner of pledges, 
and make stringent compacts. What is the use ? You 
cannot catch the ethereal fragrance of love with these 
pitiful mouse-traps. All you can faithfully perform of 
these promises is the bare ceremony of marriage ; and if, 
by the time, the old love has fled, who would marry? 
As for the care on the part of a woman to keep herself 
out of temptation, that depends on her character, which, 



396 LOVERS' MISERIES. 

also, vows do not affect. If a woman is prone to flirt- 
ation, she will attract possible lovers unconsciously. She 
will explain the intimacy with an ingenious casuistry 
that quite satisfies her own conscience. And the fact is 
that, if she does get off with the old love and take on with 
the new, the old lover has reason to thank God that she 
did so before marriage. A woman with this weakness 
in her constitution is always unsafe, and the mischief 
done when she is unmarried is nothing to what might 
occur under other circumstances. 

Having said so much about our sweethearts, a word 
must be added about our wives. They have no reason 
to complain. The matured, wise, tried love of man's 
developed nature is of infinitely greater value than the 
temporary frenzy of youth. The common talk about 
first love is full of absurdity, though what the poets say 
about the divine idealisms of first love — idealisms which 
must have been destroyed in any case, and which, once 
destroyed, never return — is too true. It is far better, 
surely, that the destruction of these idealisms should be 
effaced by some one with whom a man is not bound to 
spend the rest of his life. Wives should consider that 
the former sweethearts of their husbands have done the 
latter a kindly, though temporarily bitter, service. There 
is no cause for jealousy in those moments when the old 
pain throbs again, and the eyes grow distant, and the 
mind is filled with old scenes and old faces. The woman 
who expects that her husband's life, previous to his meet- 
ing her, shall be a blank sheet, so far as love is concerned, 
expects an impossibility. As we have already said, there 
are few men who do not fall in love before they can 
marry ; hence a large proportion of these universal love- 
miseries. Love springs up in defiance of social and other 
restrictions of all kinds, and the restrictions, as a rule, 



LOVERS' MISERIES. 397 

conquer. A great many circumstances must accurately 
fit and unite before a " match " can be made. Love ig- 
nores these circumstances. He scouts the preliminary 
necessity of obtaining an introduction, a simple but often 
remarkably difficult matter. He takes no heed of social 
position, of proud friends, of pecuniary difficulties, of 
professional requirements, of physiological stumbling- 
blocks (such as the presence of hereditary insanity or 
consumption in a family), and a dozen familiar matters. 
Locksmiths are not the only people at whom he laughs ; 
he snaps his fingers in the face of position-loving moth- 
ers, of crusty papas, of irate uncles. Indeed, the first 
splendid love of a young man imagines itself capable of 
conquering the world, and why should such a divinely 
potent influence stop to consider these trifling social con- 
tingencies? Why should not he go forth and carry off, 
by right of conquest, his beloved one, even as the noble 
savage chooses himself a bride and wins her by main 
strength of arms ? Why, too, should not this beautiful 
love of his be eternal and indestructible, and why should 
not the " Madchen schon und wunderbar " be moved by 
a like supreme and lasting passion ? Sooner or later the 
terrible logic of experience shatters these magnificent 
dreams, and the sound of the shattering of them is mixed 
with a human shriek of pain. That cry will for ever 
ring in his ears, and haunt his dreams, and remain one 
of the impenetrable mysteries of life. 

34 






^^W/LaWK^ 




V^^^^S^v^^; 




/£=-^ =sS=! ^ ...•«°"M!c 



BACHELORS BY BROFESSION 




ONKS and dervishes and fakirs are far from hav- 
ing a monopoly of professional celibacy. Every 
day we come across men in society whom we 
' v nSV^ ) instinctively recognize as absolutely beyond the 
pale of matrimony. It is true they have taken 
no vows upon them ; and it is just as well, for they are 
not at all the men to be religiously bound by vows under 
extraordinary temptations. But they carry a sort of' 
mark set upon their brows — conspicuous enough to 
female eyes at least — so that no woman shall marry 
them. Not that they are unconscious of the advantages 
of money or insensible to the attractions of beauty. 
Without something of the former their occupation would 
be gone and their lives a blank ; and as for the second, 
they often profess themselves its most devoted admirers. 
They are by no means indifferent to their own personal 
appearance. Nomadic in their habits as Arabs, although 
their forte lies rather in receiving than in offering hospi- 
tality, their wardrobes are necessarily compact and port- 
able, but they contain no garment that is not unexcep- 
tional in cut and fit. Their slightly-worn gloves alone, 
masterpieces of Alexandre or Jouvin, are a little fortune 
to those who claim them as their perquisite. They are 

398 



BACHELORS BY PROFESSION. 399 

generally pretty comfortable in their circumstances ; you 
seldom hear of disagreeable esclandres with their trades- 
people, or of suspicious paper bearing their name float- 
ing in doubtful quarters. They have lived through a 
race of folly in which weaker and more unlucky men 
have come to grief long ago, and their eye to the main 
chance is very much keener than when they started in 
life many years before. They were richer then, but since 
that they have sown and reaped many a crop of wild 
oats ; they have bought their farming experience clear, 
but now that it is purchased and paid for, at least they 
are wise enough to profit by it. 

There are but few houses where they cannot make 
themselves at once the valued friend of the family by 
pressing common acquaintances into doing duty in pre- 
senting them. They must have had fair brains to start 
with, a taste for society and a turn for conversation, 
otherwise they would have taken to a different line or 
broken down in their present one, and they have had 
ample opportunity of cultivating those natural gifts. 
The school they have been trained in turns out exceed- 
ingly pleasant causeurs and raconteurs. Their flow of 
small talk is copious and genial, and they keep in the 
background a reserve of personal and slightly scandal- 
ous anecdote, to give it occasionally an appetizing 
piquancy. 

With all these social attractions they are admitted 
trustingly into the penetralia of female society. With 
much more of the serpent than of the dove in their com- 
position, they are permitted to glide among the fairest 
flowers of Paradise, for they are supposed to have lost 
their fatal fangs. The most austere and hard-eyed chap- 
eron smooths her front and disarms her vigilance as she 
sees them exchanging affectedly passionate glances with 



400 BACHELORS BY PROFESSION. 

her pretty charges or breathing soft nothings among the 
very roses in their hair, It is a lesson with the foils, 
and' nothing more — useful practice for more serious work. 
The gentleman admires the graceful outlines, the fault- 
less features, of some Edith con de cygne, but it is an ob- 
ject of art, as if he were before the Venus de' Medici in 
the Tribune at Florence. * Nor do6s she quicken his pulse 
by a single beat. On her side, the lady never dreams of 
him as a possible husband, and would as soon think of 
being led to the altar by the Patriarch of the Greek 
Church. Charms and compliments glance alike from 
each, as arrows from the plates of an iron-clad, and they 
separate the best friends in the world, but nothing more.. 
Indeed, it could hardly be given to mortal beauty, un- 
aided by enchantments and love-potions, to effect such 
a conquest. The professional bachelor is the embodi- 
ment of wariness so highly cultivated as to amount to 
folly. Did he make a spring and miss it there would 
be nothing left him but to slink out of society. He is 
become so suspicious that it is utterty in vain to spread 
a snare for him ; did he fancy any symptoms of a de- 
sign to draw him into an arrangement he would be sat- 
isfied that, all appearances to the contrary, it must be a 
bad bargain for him. He would see social birdlime on 
every twig, and repel the advances of an heiress ready 
to marry him without a settlement, as the crowd de- 
clined to buy the sovereigns of the gentleman who was 
selling them for shillings for a wager. Should he by 
any miracle be so far left to himself as to make love in 
earnest, he would never succeed in convincing the lady 
that she was not the victim of a practical joke in the 
worst possible taste. She would never receive the decla- 
ration seriously ; protests and vows would only make her 
laugh or cry, and despair and suicide would be attributed 



BACHELORS BY PROFESSION. 401 

to a coincidence rather than a broken heart. Gentlemen 
of this sort are quite conscious of the tacit understand- 
ing that places them on such a brotherly footing with 
the sex. When they affect to act the lovesick Romeo 
to the simulated languishing of a Juliet, they are quite 
aware that it is only a bit of bj^-play which must not in- 
terrupt the main action of the piece. When the gentle- 
man who msiy turn out to be the hero approaches the 
heroine they have the tact to get out of the way and 
leave him the field, in case he should care to throw the 
handkerchief. If they lose the pleasures of love-making, 
at least they are spared the pangs of jealousy. If appe- 
tite is impaired, it is the liver and not the heart — late 
hours, not blighted affections. Their lives flow along 
easily enough ; and, as a rule, a mind at peace with 
themselves and all the world leaves them a wonderfully 
good digestion. If making their own happiness the 
chief end of their lives has narrowed the circle of their 
sympathies, at least it has proportionately diminished 
those disturbing influences which, as Bossuet told gen- 
tlemen of their stamp at the court of the Grand Mon- 
arque, it is impossible to shut out altogether. When all 
your family circle is comprised within your coat, and 
your whole worldly movables in your portmanteaux 
and gun-cases, the postman's knock has few terrors for 
you. Without family troubles of your own, you can 
get up a plausible amount of sympathy with those of 
other people ; and a man whose small talk flows as 
pleasantly before breakfast as after dinner is sure to be 
generally a welcome guest. 

The profession has its drawbacks even at its best, but 

the great objection is that a man retrogrades instead 

of advancing in it. All along he has held his own, in a 

manner, upon sufferance, and been admitted to circles 

34 * 2 A 



402 BACHELORS BY PROFESSION. 

higher than his natural one on the strength of gifts much 
the same as those of a Parisian Quatorzieme. Thousands 
of men who have shone as very much lesser lights were 
just as well dressed, as pleasant, as good-humored as 
himself, and much more clever. Unluckily, even such 
qualities as he has deteriorate with time, and a course 
of late hours, good dinners and heavy suppers is an ad- 
mirable training for the blue devils. He has no mental 
resources lying below what used to sparkle on the sur- 
face, and fits of depression become longer and more fre- 
quent. Should he be found out in these more than 
once, should his friends by comparing notes convert 
suspicions into certainties and pronounce him a bore 
and a fogy, then it is all over with him. It is painful 
to see him on the wane, making frantic efforts to pre- , 
serve his footing in the skirts of that atmosphere of so- 
ciety which has become to him as the breath of his nos- 
trils. Once let his convulsive struggles be observed, and 
he is deserted as plague-stricken ; it becomes only a ques- 
tion of time as to when he falls back into the abyss. 
He has been used all his life to be petted by women, 
and banished to the common herd of -bachelors he 
is like a nervous child turned out in the dark. The 
club-table is a dreary change from the board bright 
with flowers and plate and waxlights, flashing eye's and 
blooming complexions, and set in seas of diaphanous 
muslin. It is a melancholy fate to pass one's best days 
in a profession that can lead to nothing, but it is worse 
still to try a new start in life when hope is over for you. 



WAITING FOR PRINCE PRETTY- 
MAN. 




HE question with those women who have what the 
world calls " chances " is not, save in rare excep- 
tional cases, Shall I refuse them all? but, Which 
shall I take ? It is a grave question, as every wo- 
man knows who has at the same moment a bond 
fide lover of a good kind and a potential hanger-on of a 
better ; and it is a question in which soul and sense, pru- 
dence and passion, the lovely dreams of romance and the 
greatest chance of a practical prosaic happiness, seldom 
unite. Many girls, chiefly family favorites and consid- 
ered pretty in their circle — in which opinion they them- 
selves concur — but also some who are neither, refuse all 
sorts of fair-seeming offers out of the pure unreason of 
youth and for the sake of the dazzling possibilities of the 
future. They do not know how many golden balls, ever 
so much bigger and richer than this, may not be thrown 
at their feet, and they reject the actual and living man, 
who would really have made them very happy if they 
would only think so, waiting for that apocryphal Prince 
Prettyman who never comes. They are dimly conscious, 
too, that when a woman gives herself in marriage she has 
lost her present form of intoxicating supremacy, though 
by tact and temper she may gain another of a more sober 

403 



404 WAITING FOR PRINCE PRETTYMAN. 

and durable kind. The courting-time is her time of 
queenhood, and so long as she keeps from uttering that 
fatal Yes she is mistress of the situation, as the one who 
has to decide for the misery or happiness of both, and 
who can confer a favor and grant a prayer. All girls feel 
this, and those among them who have most of what is 
called maidenly pride in their intuitive knowledge of 
what their self-surrender means, half unconsciously, half 
consciously prolong that moment of surrender, as any 
one else would delay any action by which power was 
lost, though, in a sense, security was gained. This is one 
reason why girls with chances hesitate, and why they are 
sometimes so long in making up their minds that the 
chances pass by and leave them stranded for the re- 
mainder of their days. 

Another reason of their delay is Prince Prettyman. 
There are women who are alwa} r s waiting for the coming 
of the prince, like the high-born maiden in the palace 
towers of romance and Fairyland, and who will be con- 
tent with nothing less than their ideal realized. Nobody 
is good enough for them, and their friends stare at the 
infatuation which led them to refuse such suitable, such 
excellent offers, for no one knows what reason. Smith 
is one of the aspirants. He is really a very good fellow, 
with a nice present income, fair prospects, and no hered- 
itary disease that the world knows of. To be sure, he is 
no Rothschild, and his sharp-featured mother, with his 
tribe of busy maiden sisters and industrious brothers, do 
not take rank among the idealities of the human race. 
But, so far as he himself goes, you might find many a 
worse man, if some better, and Clorinda would not do 
amiss if she chose him. Clorinda rejects him. She is 
waiting for Prince Prettyman — Prince Prettyman, who 
has no sharp-featured old mother with strict notions, no 



WAITING FOR PRINCE PRETTYMAN. 405 

busy maiden sisters who talk three at a time, and who 
would consider her house, her maids and her babies as 
much theirs as her own, no industrious brothers of all 
sorts of queer professions, and no amount of "style." 
Smith's income and prospects and good condition gen- 
erally are not sufficient for her ; penniless as she is, she 
must have perfection all round — Prince Pretty man, and 
never a flaw in his circumstances, personal or relative. 
Brown comes to the front, and lays siege to the fair 
Amanda's heart, as Smith had done to Clorinda's. He 
gratifies her romantic aspirations as little as in the other 
case. He is as worthy a fellow as ever stepped, and he, 
too, has enough and to spare for comfort. He would be 
a quiet, placable kind of husband, who would use his 
latchkey with discretion, and not make her temper bad 
by the sourness of his own. He would not philander 
after pretty women abroad, and he would not rage in 
the sanctuary at home. He would give her a liberal 
allowance for pins and housekeeping, and he would 
take the bo3 7 s off her hands at holiday-time, and be 
generally willing to save her both trouble and annoy- 
ance. But, with all these slices of solid pudding, he is 
not Prince Pretty man, consequently he is nowhere in 
the running. His eyes are small, his nose composes 
badly in a photograph, his voice is unmelodious and his 
hands are uncomfortable about the joints. Nevertheless, 
small eyes, a mean nose and uncomfortably articulated 
hands, united with a good home life and a kind husband, 
are better than beauty and a bad heart, rapture in the 
honeymoon and repentance ever after. Yet Amanda, 
like her sister, refuses honest, homely Brown in favor of 
the beautiful prince over the seas; and the chances are 
so many as to make a certainty that the prince will never 
cross those seas at all, and that Amanda, too, will go 



406 WAITING FOR PRINCE PRETTYMAN. 

husbandless through life because of the tinsel picture 
which romance had drawn on her young soul, and which 
there was not enough common sense about her to rub 
out ; or perchance, worse still, she will end with marry- 
ing Brown's clerk, who has every disadvantage his mas- 
ter had, and nothing of his compensation. 

Prince Prettyman has many impersonations — as many 
as there are silly girls who wait for him. Talk of a well- 
conditioned city merchant, with a sprinkling of gray 
hairs and suspicious tracts of shining scalp, or of a rising 
young professional who could as soon mount a camel as 
a horse, to those sweet creatures whose fancy paints the 
gallant hussar — talk of fidelity, tenderness, truth, and the 
like, without dash, without personal beauty, without the 
glittering insignia of Prince Prettyman — and you talk to 
the deaf. They have their ideal man and their ideal 
conditions, and nothing short of either will be accepted 
— Prince Prettyman, whatever his special form, always 
looming in the horizon, always being waited for, and in 
the great majority of cases never coming. 

It is a complaint as old as man that we only know 
how to live when we have done with life. ' The saying 
is essentially true of marriage and of the right kind of 
person to choose. Girls of romantic tendencies think 
they ought not to marry unless with the most passionate 
furore of love. They do not know that respect and com- 
patibility of temper are better sureties for a happy life 
than a passion which must in time wear itself out, how- 
ever strong it may be now, and of which the best hope 
is that it may become friendship. Good, plain, common- 
sense men, who would make excellent husbands, but are 
nothing to look at, are refused by certain of the feather- 
headed in favor of a dream that will never be realized. 
Or personal worth is refused for mere wealth quite as 



WAITING FOR PRINCE PRETTYMAN. 407 

often as for penniless romance. The man of a girl's 
fancy is too handsome to be a traitor, a roue, weak, or of 
so wayward a temper that her life, if she marries him, 
will be simply a torture. She is sure of him, she says 
with indignation when stony-hearted wisdom points out 
his patent flaws, and experience preaches caution and 
renunciation. She knows that love, will not fly out of 
the window when poverty stalks in at the door, or she 
does not believe he is a roue now, whatever the evidence. 
Of course we would not like to see women give them- 
selves to any one, no matter who he might be, for the 
sake of getting married; but the solid things of life 
should be taught them as well as its poetic beauties, and 
false hopes, false ideals, unsubstantial love should be 
rigorously excluded. A bad marriage or a loveless life 
is not a pleasant coda to that never-acted romance, nor 
is the disenchantment which comes with such cruel cer- 
tainty on the heels of the lovesick and unsuitable mar- 
riage a blessing to be desired. Beauty fades, passion 
cools, the blindness of romance gets couched when see- 
ing is too late; poetry does not pay the butcher, and 
gallantry of bearing of the " long sword, saddle, bridle " 
kind is apt to lose itself in domestic bad language when 
the pot is empty of pudding, and half a dozen children 
swarm about the musty lodgings or dingy quarters to 
which love and folly have reduced the gay butterfly and 
his bride. On the whole, Prince Prettyman is a danger- 
ous fellow either to get or to wait for, having the trick 
of unsubstantiality throughout. Romantic girls would 
do well to reflect that, if they are to have only one gown 
in a lifetime, they had better buy one that will wash and 
wear creditably to the end, rather than a flimsy bit of 
finery that looks well only in the beginning and goes to 
pieces before the first year is out. 



PROPOSALS. 




|UT of all the probable marriages, actual marriages, 
and breaches of promise of marriage talked of, it 
is curious how seldom any accurate information 
respecting offers of marriage reaches the ears of 
society. Is it that in such a delicate matter each 
one is afraid to pass the story on to his neighbor, lest he 
should be supposed, however innocent, to be personally 
implicated ? Selden tells us that of all the actions of a 
man's life his marriage least concerns other people, yet, 
of all actions of our life, it is most meddled with by 
other people; perhaps mankind tacitly covenants not to 
meddle with the proposal by way of compensation for 
the eagerness with which they canvass the marriage. At 
any rate, it is a merciful condescension on their part. 
We will accept it gratefully, for it is an insult to society 
to suppose that it is not well informed on proposals as a 
general rule, and could make things very uncomfortable 
for lovers if it chose. A proposal on this view is to the 
engagement what the honeymoon is to wedded life — the 
halting but necessary prelude which, by general consent, 
nobody listens to, before the full notes of the performer 
challenge attention. 

It may be doubted, however, whether the fact that 

408 




ACCEPTED. 



PROPOSALS. 409 

men are not so talkative on this as on other subjects may 
not arise from an uneasy consciousness that in their own 
case they rather made fools of themselves. We do not 
for a moment mean that they repent of their choice ; if 
we did, it is to be hoped that no indignant wife would 
read a word farther. But, speaking generally, proposals 
come suddenly. Most men have arranged their proposal 
long before in their own minds, and rehearsed it often, 
till there shall be no chance of any blunder at the critical 
moment. It shall be done, they determine, at such and 
such a time, in this manner rather than in that, en grand 
tenue or in a shooting-coat; there shall be no dropping 
on one or both knees as was usual in the last century, 
when our grandmothers were expected to faint as soon as 
their languishing " swain " (such was the term then in 
vogue) took out his pocket-handkerchief as a preliminary. 
The playwrights have effectually ruined this expedient ; 
therefore a more natural occasion must be sought, which 
shall be when the lady comes in from walking, say, or 
when she is riding. Some men even settle with them- 
selves whether they shall take one of her hands or 
whether it is better to seize both in the transports of their 
declaration, and other little niceties of this kind, which 
those who have been in such a situation may be left to 
imagine for themselves. Ninety-nine times out of a 
hundred this little scheme most egregiously fails. Chloris 
does not go out as we expected, or bashfulness over- 
powered her Strephon, and the irrevocable moment 
slipped by. On the other hand, Ianthe sings one morn- 
ing with such exquisite taste, all bystanders being out of 
the wa}r, that her enraptured hearer proposes on the spot. 
A tear, an accident, a family affliction in the same way 
often precipitates the proposal, and the luckless planner 
is afterward so disgusted at his own simplicity in devis- 

35 



410 PROPOSALS. 

ing such complicated means for so easy an end that he is 
certain not to mention his experiences even to his dearest 
friend. Ungallant, too, though the suggestion be, there 
may be added to this in his thoughts a spice of the feel- 
ing hinted at in the proverb, " A burnt child dreads the 
fire." These considerations would somewhat lessen our 
wonder that the world knows so little of its proposals. 
We trust that in divulging them we are not vexing any 
of our sex, or rashly giving the other one new arms to 
use against our unhappy selves. 

It may be taken as an axiom, therefore, that just as the 
experience of all the deepest thinkers, from Plato onward, 
confirms the old notion of love being involuntary — " at 
first sight," as we say — so a proposal generally comes 
upon both parties to it unexpectedly. Some might sup- 
pose that the nobler sex herein were in evil case, that a 
dread domestic power impelled them onward to their 
fate independently of their volition. And this seems 
true to a certain extent ; but the bachelor has safeguards 
at hand if he has also enemies. Thus the first step 
toward his foes — the " overtures," as they are euphemis- 
tically termed — is always in his own power. . The initia- 
tive is his. He need not wade into the fair-flowing river 
unless he chooses ; but if he does, let him not complain 
if all at once he finds himself out of his depth. Again, 
he can write his proposal, if it seems good to him. This 
saves a world of trouble to bashful or fainthearted men, 
but it has many drawbacks. A story is told of a senior 
wrangler who dropped into a lonely parsonage during a 
walking tour, fell in love with the host's daughter, and 
wrote his proposal to her. He wished her " good-bye," 
like an ordinary mortal, and when her father bade him 
farewell at the little station to which they had driven, he 
handed him the note and requested him to deliver it on 



PROPOSALS. 411 

his return. The father consented, and put it in his 
pocket. For a year the mathematician heard nothing 
from his bride elect. Then, judging that this passed even 
the ordinary habit of women to procrastinate, he made a 
point, on his tour during the vacation, once more to call 
at the parsonage. He was received as before, and not 
quite so warmly by the young lady as he anticipated. 
Her father, on being asked, did not know that the note 
was of much importance, and had forgotten to deliver it. 
The driving-coat was examined. There was the letter 
still in its pocket. Then, again, servants and postmis- 
tresses have an ugly trick of reading letters. Secresy, 
too, is often rendered difficult even during the necessary 
deliberation of the lady if the letter arrives at breakfast- 
time in a family circle. 

Except in extreme cases proposals in writing are not 
to be recommended. They savor of cowardice. Better 
far stand up and meet your fate like a man. If we were 
empowered by the Court of Love to ascertain the feelings 
of the ladies on this point, there is no doubt but that to 
a woman they would prefer the rough-and-ready wooer 
who dashes straight into the proposal at once, flounders 
about a little, but finally passes the Rubicon successfully, 
and on the other side awaits the decision of lips that ever 
smile on the brave. A man who proposes by letter de- 
serves to lose his suit. It is far better to ask by word of 

mouth, 

" Excipiet blandes comita ilia preces." 

Another golden rule for those about to make a propo- 
sal is, Keep your own counsel ; but if you must have an 
adviser never consult a woman, unless your oracle sits 
on a tripod far removed from every mundane influence. 
The mortification of a refusal has an additional sting 
lent it if it has to be afterward communicated to the 



412 PROPOSALS. 

Mentor. Men who feel most take their loss in silence. 
The brow may be smooth while the heart is a heap of 
ashes (Lesbia laughs, but it is so sometimes), and the 
stricken affections love to suffer and writhe in unseen 
agony, as an animal seeks to die in the thickest covert. 
Videus (to tell a case in point which is so business-like it 
could only have happened to a widower) called at Flor- 
inda's house and was shown into the drawing-room. An 
aged aunt alone was at home, and to her he revealed the 
object of his coming — to make an offer of marriage to 
her niece. Soon Florinda entered, looking more charm- 
ing than usual, and Videus made his proposal. " I am 
very sorry," said the lady, " but Velox has been before- 
hand and has just asked me the same question. You 
are half an hour too late." Knowing what aunts gener- 
ally are, this one would have been more than mortal had 
she been reticent. Within a week the discomfiture of 
Videus was known throughout the county. 

As was hinted above, society at large is very soon 
as well acquainted with the fact of the proposal having 
been made as if the marriage-broker of Bokhara had 
been entrusted with the negotiation. But for all that, a 
reasonable reticence should be observed by the lovers as 
to the manner in which it is made. That is their secret. 
It is generally the gentleman's fault if this be divulged, 
which may ensue from his choosing a wrong time and 
place for the ceremony, from the natural impulsiveness 
of his kind as distinguished from the ready tact of 
women, or simply from the trifling fact that he speaks 
too loud. Thus a friend who was leaving the drawing- 
room one day, in great glee at being an engaged man, 
was met by the servant in the passage with the remark, 
" I suppose, sir, you will not have to ring at the bell any 
more now." It may be, however, that she was innocent 



PROPOSALS. 413 

of listening at the door, as men in such a situation are 
apt to show their joy. Mercator, a portly Eastern man, 
having secured the hand of Sophia, rushed wildly into 
the dining-room where her two married sisters were dis- 
creetly sitting, and having seized and embraced them 
both, exclaiming, " My dear sisters ! Sophy is mine !" 
then, and then only, perceived that he had seriously 
alarmed Buttons, who was putting coal on the fire. 

Amongst proposals are the matter-of-fact proposal, as 
when an honest agriculturist says, " I doesn't like beating 
about the bush ; Nancy, will 'ee be mj^ owld dumman? — 
do 'ee now !" Or, as actually happened in the case of a 
man who taught at a girls' school, and had had all the 
romance taken out of him by hard work, " You stitch 
very nicely; would you like to darn my stockings?" 
Readers will be glad to hear that he was accepted, and 
after marriage went back quietly from church to finish 
his lesson. Then there is the business-like proposal, 
often too familiarly exemplified in royal alliances or 
noble marriages, where a title is balanced against wealth. 
We remember an amusing instance of it in a clergyman 
who made his proposal, and then slowly added, by way 
of clenching it, " I would have you consider, before you 
say no: first, whether you ever had a proposal made to 
you before ; secondly, whether it is likely you will ever 
again have one made to you." The lady appreciated the 
argument and married him. It is a precedent, however, 
only to be recommended for general adoption in the case 
of ladies " of a certain age." We may exemplify the 
jocular proposal by the story of the man who when 
dancing " Pop goes the weasel," at the time when that 
tune was so popular, asked his partner, " Will you pop 
through life with me?" Indeed, a ball-room would 
furnish many stories of proposals, for in no place are 

35* 



414 PROPOSALS. 

they more commonly made, contrary to the received 
notion that hollow lanes or secluded groves are the places 
best suited for asking the all-important question. Those 
who choose such localities as these to propose in are the 
persons who fancy that marriage means love in a cottage, 
and the honeymoon to sit like babes in the wood, or Mr. 
Millais' damsels, hand-in-hand in an apple-orchard. A 
jocular proposal often serves to feel the way for a real 
one, or to cover the discomfiture of a refusal. Occasion- 
ally it only ministers to the vanity of the proposer, as 
when a man who simply means flirting proposes, and, 
on being tremblingly accepted, says, "Ah, you saucy 
puss! you would not have said yes if I had been in 
earnest." Such fellows, however, are generally careful 
that their victim has no brother. It is as well to answer 
their overtures in a similar strain, or to give an evasive 
reply — such, for instance, as has actually been said, " I 
can't make tea!" 

As for the sentimental proposal, we must beg to be ex- 
cused entering upon it ; that is the business of the novel- 
writer rather than the essayist. Take up the next three- 
volume novel you find with some such title as " Hearts 
and Loves," or "The Maid of Rosemount," and at least 
two instances of it will be discovered in each volume. So 
little is known, as a general rule, about proposals, and 
sensible people are so diffident in the matter, that they 
gladly fly to novels to see how the thing is done, just as 
silly people have recourse to a letter-writer to get ideas 
for love-letters. In a novel, as on the stage, no proposal 
is taking which is not dramatic, thereby showing how 
untrustworthy novels are, as a rule, in depicting the 
events of ordinary life. In real life nothing is so un- 
common as a romantic proposal. Even those who, with 
the most high-flown notions of courtship, intend their 



PROPOSALS. 415 

proposal to be a marvel of romance, are generally egre- 
giously disappointed at the result. The most enterprising 
cavalier of this kind we have known found himself 
compelled by the force of circumstances to turn carpet- 
knight and propose to his ladye-love on the hearth-rug ; 
so close at all times is the prosaic to the sentimental. A 
man of this turn of mind may be well matched with a 
fashionable young lady's idea of a lover. 

The feminine course on these occasions is not within 
the bounds of calculation — from " Barkis is willin' " to 
the most elegant and premeditated forms of expression, 
and in all varieties of effective response. There is a story 
in Ruth where the faithful servant relates her mode of 
receiving the addresses of her lover, who, unfortunately 
for him, chose the time for paying his court when she 
was engaged in washing the kitchen floor. She felt it to 
be no occasion for remitting her exertions, but doggedly 
pursued him with brush and pail as he uneasily changed 
from chair to chair so long as a dry spot remained 
whence to declare his passion. Proposals is a subject 
upon which Mr. Trollope never ceases to exercise his in- 
genuity. " Oh, oh, Mary," cries Frank Gresham, " do 
you love me? Don't you love me? Won't you love 
me? Say you will ! Oh, Mary, dearest Mary, will you? 
Won't you? Do you? Don't you? Come* now, you 
have a right to give a fellow an answer." Sir Charles 
Grandison was more stately. "Can you, madam?" 
asks he. " I can, I do," replied the lady. Miss Edge- 
worth in Patronage says that Caroline, a girl of eighteen, 
listened to her first offer " with a degree of composure 
which astonished and mortified her lover. There was 
none of the flutter of vanity in her manner, nor any of 
the repressed satisfaction of pride. There was in her 
looks only simplicity and dignity. She said she was at 



416 PROPOSALS. 

present happily occupied in various ways endeavoring to 
improve herself, and that she should be sorry to have 
her mind turned from these pursuits." Mr. Trollope 
quotes a scene from real life. The couple were by no 
means plebeian, or below the proper standard of high 
bearing or high breeding ; they were a handsome pair, 
living among educated people, sufficiently given to men- 
tal pursuits, and in every way what a pair of polite 
lovers ought to be. The site of the passionate scene was 
the sea-shore, on which they were walking in autumn. 
The all-important conversation passed in this wise : 

Gentleman. — " Well, Miss , the long and the short 

of it is this : here I am ; you can take me or leave me." 

Lady (scratching a gutter with her parasol, so as to 
allow a little salt water to run out of one hole into 
another). — " Of course I know that's all nonsense." 

Gentleman. — "Nonsense! It isn't nonsense at all. 
Come, Jane, here I am ; come, at any rate you can say 
something." 

Lady. — " Yes, I suppose I can say something." 

Gentleman. — "Well, which is it to be, take me or 
leave me ?" n 

Lady (very slowly, and with a voice hardly articulate, 
carrying on at the same time her engineering work on 
a wider scale). — " Well, I don't exactly want to leave 
you." 

Perhaps, after a ball-room, a drive might be termed a 
good opportunity for proposals. In both cases there is 
a whirl and an abandon apt to carry away the sternest 
resolves of bachelors. No time is more dangerous for 
lovers than the evening ride home through the quiet 
woodland ways, after a day when they have been witched 
with noble horsemanship. 

The Basques have a sarcastic proverb, " The marriage- 



PROPOSALS. 417 

day is the morrow of good times ;" it is the day of pro- 
posal which admits the "palmer in Love's eye" to the 
full enjoyment of the engaged man's rights. They have 
a ludicrous side (which luckily the neophyte never sees 
for himself), as in the room which must be given up to 
the happy pair to do their love-making in; the cares 
bestowed that the usual worries of a household do not 
disturb them ; the atmosphere of roses and zephyrs 
which is so assiduously created for their delectation. 
Perhaps to the over-sensitive lover engaged life has also 
something that at its best estate is jarring and ominous. 
Thus, one of our most amusing novelists speaks of him 
as being a victim, with an uneasy consciousness that all 
the petits soins showered so thickly upon him during this 
period are but the fillets and ribbons necessary for his 
graceful decoration preliminary to the marriage-day — 
the day of the great sacrifice. The cynic or the jester 
may decry the pleasures of an engagement; but we 
should ill repay the confidence of our readers did we 
not hasten to assure them, from the plenitude of our 
experience, that engaged life is a very blissful period. 
It is the May of life, all flowers and sunshine, far re- 
moved from the winter of bachelordom, but with many 
an intimation of the long even days of wedlock's sum- 
mer, and no state is more happy than engaged life, 
except a married one. 

2B 



MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 



HERE are two things which almost every one 
I finds it difficult to do easily and with grace. One 
t'^±st is for a man to announce orally that he is going 
^}^f% to be married, and the other is to congratulate 
him. Why the announcement should cause em- 
barrassment is obvious. However proud the happy 
lover may feel in his heart, he knows that by saying he 
is going to be married he at least exposes himself to the 
criticism of friendly curiosity. The friend to whom the 
announcement is made has also many reasons for feeling 
a little nervous. Not being a foreigner, he cannot throw 
himself on his friend's neck and have a good blubber, 
and he must confine his congratulations within the lim- 
its of conventional reserve. The surprise and the oddity 
of the thing, again, often overpower every deeper feel- 
ing for the moment, and even the sincerest and warmest 
friend has been known to receive the affecting intelli- 
gence with no other answer than one long peal of 
laughter. 

And there is also a deeper cause of embarrassment. 
It is for the person to whom the news is imparted to 
continue the conversation. He must ask something; 
and what is he to ask ? So far as the lady's name goes, 
and the place of her residence, all is straightforward. 

418 




INTERRUPTED. 



MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 419 

But what is to come next? It is absurd to ask whether 
she is pretty, for it is painful to the lover, if he is honest, 
to have to say she is not; and if he says she is, every 
one sets it down as a natural delusion. 

Delicacy equally forbids any inquiries as to her money. 
It is taking so very marketing a view to look at the affair 
of a friend's heart as a mere bargain. The only obvious 
and unexceptionable question is to ask whether it is to 
be soon, and to hear whether there is to be an engage- 
ment or an immediate marriage. If there is to be no 
engagement, the hero is thought more fortunate than 
ever. Not to wait at all, but to go in at once to connu- 
bial happiness and the smoothest of all possible loves, 
is considered a great triumph. The best imaginable lot 
is when a man has nothing to do but hang up his hat in 
his wife's house. Anything like an engagement is a 
diminution of the glory of matrimon}^. Engagements 
are romantic, but they are not business-like, and friends 
always take a remarkably business-like view of each 
other's marriages ; or if they do not do so really, at any 
rate they pretend to do so, in order that their reputation 
as smart worldly people may not accidentally suffer. 

Engagements, however, are really the natural corol- 
laries of the modern theory of marriage, which supposes 
that unions spring from affection based on compatibility 
of temper, tastes and principles. On the contrary theory, 
engagements are unreasonable. If married happiness 
depends, as many hold, not on the preliminary romance 
or any antecedent harmony, but merely on that power 
of adaptation which enables any two human beings who 
are forced to live together to get on pretty well and fall 
in with each, other's ways, there is no object in forming 
an engagement. If A is not ready to marry, B is ; and 
according to the hypothesis, B will do just as well. 



420 MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 

The great advantage possessed by those who hold this 
view of marriage is that they can appeal to facts. They 
say that, however marriages are commenced, they all 
end in about the same average of happiness. Great 
trials arising from worldly inconveniences being avoided, 
as many married people will get on well if they meet 
for the first time at the altar as if they have spent a 
couple of years in eager flirtation. Their adversaries 
are obliged to shirk this appeal to facts and rest their 
case on the capabilities of the human heart. If nature 
has given a taste for poetry, a belief in constancy, a pas- 
sion for romantic excitement, a possibility of a partial 
or total absorption in another person, it seems a pity to 
throw all this away because in course of time house- 
keeping will go on moderately well whether it has been 
thrown away or cultivated. If love is to have anything 
like the place in life which it holds in poetry, room ought 
to be given it to expand. 

Long engagements are, in their way, bad things, but 
justifiable bad things. If two persons love each other, 
and love is the one great thing in their lives that makes 
their lives valuable, it is very difficult to show that they 
do not gain by a long engagemont. It is said that the 
girl loses the best years of her life, and wastes away 
without the happiness and respectability of being mar- 
ried. Observations like this clearly proceed from the 
secret belief that one man would really do as well for 
her as another. If only one man would do, a crumb 
that falls from his table must be better than the richest 
banquet of any one else. Long engagements are at any 
rate better than nothing; and if life is a blank without this 
particular love, a faint existence is preferable to annihila- 
tion. Both parties would have a more equable and peace- 
ful life if they agreed to forget and kept their resolution. 



MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 421 

But the people who prefer equanimity to love ought 
scarcely to judge of others who have a contrary taste. 

The real reason why long engagements are objected to 
is that as a matter of fact all the love that most people 
are capable of may be satisfactorily excited not only by 
any one of a considerable number of persons, but by 
several persons in succession. 

If an engagement is forbidden, the common run of 
lovers are quite happy in a few months, and are on the 
lookout for a serener courtship. But the exceptions — 
those who really love when they are about it, who can- 
not repeat or transfer their feelings — unquestionably gain 
by not having to undergo a total separation. No man 
or woman of a really tender or constant nature, and once 
absorbed in a great passion, either refused to enter on a 
long engagement or regretted having formed one. The 
only thing is that engagements affect not only the par- 
ties themselves, but their friends ; and why should friends 
go through all the anxiety and trouble of a long engage- 
ment when exceptional lovers are so rare ? 

It is in the interest of society that these engagements 
are discountenanced. The lovers themselves, if the 
modern theory of marriage is true, certainly profit by 
an engagement of some moderate length preceding 
marriage. It is not only that they learn to know each 
other, and have opportunities of seeing whether the 
desired harmony really exists, but many fine feelings 
never blossom at all if marriage immediately follows 
on a chance acquaintanceship. The niceties of courtship 
are superseded by this leveling rapidity. In the first 
.place, there are no letters, or at any rate none worth 
speaking of. There is a smack of furniture and dress 
about the correspondence of a couple that will not con- 
descend to wait. Now, on all the principles of ro- 

36 



422 MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 

mance and poetry, letters are among the choicest flowers 
of love. They express feelings which would be nipped 
in the bud if they were not put on paper. Receiving 
a love-letter is undoubtedly a sensation, and a very 
pleasant sensation, and why should it not be expe- 
rienced? Probably many engagements are shortened 
purposely, because one or both of the parties are con- 
scions that they have nothing to say. But real lovers 
can go on for pages, and, Avhat is more, can bear to 
read the pages they receive. A lover — a truly happy, 
ardent, passionate lover — can stand crossing and scented 
note-paper, and both are trials to the male heart in its 
natural state. Poetry, too, ought to be written, or at 
least there ought to be songs without words passing to 
and fro. Young people cannot be much in love if they 
do not have "imaginings." But if they are to be mar- 
ried immediately, poetry is quite out of place. If a wife 
is a bargain, no one who has just paid earnest for her is 
likely to sing hymns to her. The Arab wrote his pretty 
verses to the horse he supposed he was going to lose, and 
not to the one that was just being trotted to his tent. 

There appears to us to be no answer to this apology for 
engagements. The pleasure they offer is one which 
marriage does not offer ; therefore to forego it is to lose 
something, and the something that is lost is the very 
thing which is supposed to be the leading characteristic 
of most matches. If every one went through the love 
vicissitudes of a novel, there would be no necessity for 
an engagement. If there was always a stern father who 
interfered exactly when a passion had been formed, if 
the parted couple were being continually thrown to- 
gether by the most astonishing coincidence, and if the 
sudden wealth and the dignity of the hero ultimately 
brought every one round, there would have been plenty 



MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 423 

of love-making, and the sooner the parson was applied 
to, the better. But in real life things are tamer. If an 
immediate marriage is impossible, it is generally a choice 
between total separation and an engagement ; and if the 
lovers adopt the latter course, they gain more by it than 
they would have gained by being married immediately — 
that is, if they have any taste for the poetical and any 
feelings to express. If not, the sooner they get to pay- 
ing taxes and ordering dinner, the less will their course 
in life be ruffled. 

The person who really suffers from engagements is the 
intended mother-in-law. It is she who is constantly on 
the watch and in constant anxiety, without any romance 
to keep her up. What are the notes and verses in a fine 
manly hand to her ? She has trouble on trouble to bear 
up against. She has to care for the respectabilities, to 
decide what her daughter may be seen doing and what 
not, when she ought to appear and when not, who is to 
be kept informed of all that goes on and how. She has 
to endure the condoling congratulations of dear friends 
who intimate a conviction that the marriage will never 
take place. She has to repeat a thousand times the ver- 
sion of facts which she has settled on as calculated to put 
the best front on things. She has to guard the interests 
of all those members of her family who are not engaged, 
and to keep their chances in life still open. If her 
daughter is unhappy, she has to receive her confidences, 
to cheer, console, and reason. If the lover is too intru- 
sive or too negligent, she has to admonish him without 
making him enter on marriage with a settled hatred of 
her. 

Mothers who love their daughters, and who are capa- 
ble of undergoing anxiety in patience, will endure this 
and smile under it. But those who are nervous, or who 



424 MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 

have only that limp feeling of intermittent regard which 
is often the only emotion daughters awaken in a mother's 
heart, either cannot or will not bear this burden. They 
begin to tease, discomfort, and worry their daughter, as 
the tedium of the affair tells upon them. They cannot 
forgive her for bringing them into a less pleasant posi- 
tion than they can fancy. If only the girl had married 
some one who would have taken her away directly he 
had fallen in love with her ! 

It is impossible to say that an engagement which 
throws the mamma into such a state is a good thing. 
There may be penalties too heavy to pay for the develop- 
ment of poetical feeling and the delight of loving without 
thought of cooks and nurses, and one of these penalties 
is the unhappiness or the unkindness of a mother. Even 
where the mother bears her lot sweetly, and where an 
engagement protracted in hope offers every opportunity 
for the blossoms of romance to spring up, the young peo- 
ple should always remember that they unavoidably give 
a great deal of trouble. The lover especially should 
move continually with the meekness proper to a man 
who is convinced he is a nuisance. 

The love-making of engaged people is very inconve- 
nient. They want a clear room to themselves ; they be- 
lieve that no one notices their most patent overtures; 
they think that anything like regularity of hours would 
be ludicrous in them. The lady has, indeed, a suspicion 
of the feelings with which her relations regard the pro- 
cess that is so interesting to her, but it is very hard for 
the lover to realize he is a bore. Young men never see 
any household difficulties. Dinner grows for them ; it is 
not cooked by a fiend who adds insolence to a love of 
perquisites and flirtation. Bedrooms clean themselves, 
furniture repairs itself. If the thought occurs that things 



MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENTS. 425 

must be done by somebody, they content themselves with 
a general persuasion that everything can be achieved by 
the simple means of giving a servant half a crown. The 
ease with which they confront household difficulties is 
immeasurably increased when they come into the house 
as triumphant lovers. They are happy, and why should 
any one else be unhappy ? 

The people who are in love are born to rule, and the 
people who are not are destined to be slaves while the 
love-making is going on. Nothing but the most assid- 
uous reflection could fix in their minds that, however lit- 
tle they may care for it, they are disarranging the whole 
course of family life, causing daily and hourly anxiety, 
and sowing a prolific crop of tiny difficulties. 

There is no moral in this. It does not show that en- 
gagements are, on the whole, bad things. The nuisance 
may be amply compensated by a deep and substantial 
happiness diffused through the famhV. Only, if he could 
but see the whole truth, the new comer would be inclined 
to feel grateful for the patience that is exercised toward 
him. The best of all arrangements is an engagement 
long enough to give the poetry of love its full swing, and 
not so long as to tire out the long-suffering of the lady's 
relations. 

36* 



-tm 




BROKEN HEARTS. 



u/| T is nothing new to say that there exists a large 
,41 mass of popular expressions and little phrases to 
ifl which no definite meaning — or, more technically 
speaking, no fixed connotation — is attached. They 
are used because they convey a popular idea to the 
popular mind; they are vague, traditional forms that 
conveniently serve to conceal, or at least to gloss over, 
an ignorance of cause and effect. All understand them, 
or fancy they do. Omne ignotum pro magnifico ; and it 
is probably for this reason that they are so widely spread 
and so deeply rooted. Without exactly telling us any- 
thing, they pretend to tell us a great deal. They sound 
well, and often, when applied to subtler subjects, they 
appear royal roads to mental analysis, or do duty as 
psychological ready-reckoners. Of this class of expres- 
sions there is none more frequently used and abused 
than that of " a broken heart." There is a deep mys- 
terious charm brooding over these words, from whose 
influence not only the many, but even certain select 
writers of poetry and novels, are unable to escape. They 
suggest all manner of deep, dark thoughts — of headlong 
careers and tragical ends. The}' may explain almost 
every act of eccentricity or of moral obliquity. It seems 

426 



BROKEN HEARTS. 427 

that any extraordinary deed for which no other satis- 
factory motive can be found may, by a kind of exhaust- 
ive process, be safely referred to a broken heart. This is 
a comfortable and philanthropical manner of discovering 
the mainspring of human actions in cases which, if 
otherwise treated, might lead us to a harsher conclusion. 
It seems also what might be expected in an age one of 
whose chief tendencies it is to regard every kind of 
crime, murder included, as the abnormal development 
of some natural propensity. The only doubt is whether 
notions of comfort and philanthropy may not be carried 
too far. 

In the poetry of Byron, and more especially of his 
imitators, who were bewildered and attracted by the 
bizarreries of their self-adopted master, broken hearts 
and blighted beings saw their palmiest clays. They were 
the centre-points of interest in each episode to which 
everything else was subordinate. But a reaction fol- 
lowed. Readers and writers alike became nauseated 
with this drawing-room sans-culottism, and, as a con- 
sequence, poetical productions became more vigorous 
and healthy. On this change of character in its poetry 
the present age cannot congratulate itself too much. But 
the doctrine of the broken heart is not yet extinct in 
English literature. It reappears in a different dress, 
while it is radically the same ; it is not enunciated with 
its former boldness, but still it is here. In certain novels 
of the Guy Livingstone stamp it is by no means uncom- 
mon to meet with some interesting Hercules who, in 
spite of his adamantine frame and rampant superfluity 
of muscle, has yet had his mighty spirit crushed within 
him ; and it is an interesting study to observe the differ- 
ent forms in which his soul's despair will develop itself. 
One who unites the simplicity of a babe with the biceps 



428 BROKEN HEARTS. 

of a giant will comfort his wounded life by sitting late 
on into the night, and, with the perpetual cigar in his 
mouth, staring strangely at the fire. Occasionally he 
seeks diversions by some perilous cross-country ride, 
during which he takes the most desperate leaps, or casu- 
ally pounds to a jelly some refractory farmer who has a 
natural objection to seeing his young crops trodden 
down. But a man who has a broken heart has surely a 
right to break other people's bones. Yet in the end he 
dies quietly in his bed ; a gentle smile breaks over that 
stern face, his lips murmur the name of her who has 
marred his being, and the brave spirit is gone. All this 
is innocent enough. Another giant, whose nature is 
less lily-like, seeks consolation in a different way. He 
will generally leave the country, will visit the various 
hells of cities, will lose thousands per night, or, gaining 
them, will curse his good luck. Eventually he may 
fancy swindling or murder, and will thus end his 
chequered career — a noble being wrecked by the breezes 
of an evil fate. But is not she who shrouded his life in 
gloom to be held responsible for his darker deeds? 
These, however, are instances of the high . heroic kind 
which can but seldom be met with among ordinary 
mortals. The broken heart, as seen in the less exalted 
being, must be repaired, if at all, with a less costly ce- 
ment. It may be well to consider the origin and the 
consequences of the catastrophe which this expression 
is popularly used to denote. 

The heart is a tender article, and must be gently 
handled ; and the causes which will produce its fracture 
are various. When a man whose life has previously 
been characterized by vigor, energy, and general liveli- 
ness, on meeting with some untoward event — the death, 
it may be, or the infidelity of his wife, or perhaps the 



BROKEN HEARTS. 429 

failure of some speculation which was to make him a 
millionaire or a pauper — falls henceforth into a state of 
moody inactivity, of indisposition to intercourse with 
his fellow-men, the change which thus comes over his 
whole character is often accounted for by saying that 
" his heart is broken." Now, the meaning of this simply 
is that the affliction or the sense of shame or the dis- 
appointment is such that he finds he does less violence 
to himself by succumbing without a struggle than he 
would were he to endeavor to shake off the chains of 
his sorrow. The stouter the stuff of which a man is 
made, the less likely is he to bear about him the traces 
of a broken heart. Again, just as illness is not without 
its sweets to children and weak-minded adults, who like 
to be regarded as interesting sufferers and made much 
of, so, too, the escape from the more onerous duties of 
life, under the plea of an all-engrossing woe, will go no 
inconsiderable way toward soothing the melancholy of 
the heart-broken man. He is at liberty to follow his own 
humor at the expense of society in everything ; he may 
talk when and as he likes, or, if he chooses, be silent. 
Should he think fit to indulge in a cynical vein, his bit- 
terest sarcasm will be excused on the ground of his irre- 
mediable grief. He is, in fact, licensed to bore both him- 
self and those about him to any extent.. It is, of course, 
impossible for a man who is suffering under any great 
trial to conceal all traces of it in his outward demeanor ; 
it is very natural and very pardonable that, for a time at 
least, he should wish to withdraw from scenes and from 
society in which he has been accustomed to mix, but 
which have now become uncongenial to him. We are 
far from setting up as a model the ideal character in the 
republic which, through reason of its own all-sufficient 
virtue, refuses to be seriously affected by sublunary sor- 



430 BROKEN HEARTS. 

rows, such as the death of a relative or a friend ; nor is 
there much chance that human nature will ever attain 
to such stoical perfection. The belief that it is better to 
strive to perform one's duty to society, even in the midst 
of the severest affliction, than to sink unresistingly into 
a slough of apathy or moroseness, does not, as some 
people would seem to think, argue heartlessness. 

" Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops ;" and why 
should sorrow be stimulated rather than checked? It is 
a mistaken sympathy and maudlin sentimentality which 
makes a hero out of the too demonstrative sufferer. It 
is a far nobler thing " to suffer and be strong " than to 
allow one's self to be known everywhere as the victim of 
a broken heart. 

There is another class of sufferers from the heart epi- 
demic who are regarded with considerable curiosity and 
interest — disappointed lovers. To say that a person has 
loved wisely and not too well is, in the eyes of the 
romantic and impassionate elect, equivalent to saying 
that he or she has never loved at all. A man who can 
come out of the fiery furnace without bearing traces of 
the flame is thought by certain juvenile enthusiastics to 
be a brute. We have a right to expect that his heart 
should be broken, and it is the fault of the heart if it is 
not. Hearts are like highly tempered steel — the best are 
the most brittle. When two young persons enter into an 
engagement to be married, pledging eternal love and 
fidelity between the figures of the Lancers or in the in- 
tervals of a waltz, it is no doubt a very serious and a very 
solemn thing. On what grounds are stern parents or 
worldly-minded guardians justified in stepping in be- 
tween the sanctity of their vows, because there happens 
to be pecuniary disparity, or, possibly, absolute defi- 
ciency? What has lucre to do with love? Unfortu- 



BROKEN HEARTS. 431 

nately, a great deal. Love does not often live in a cot- 
tage, nor, in the present century, is beauty unadorned 
adorned the most. For these reasons the hearts of many 
an enamored couple are ruthlessly torn asunder. The 
scheme of love which has been so fondly built up falls to 
the ground, and great is the fall of it. Either the young 
lady or the young gentleman, or both, are for the time 
being heartbroken, the space necessary for repairing the 
fracture being regulated by the circumstances of condi- 
tion or age. Be it long or be it short, the severed pieces 
will eventually unite. Now, it may be said that this 
would hardly be possible if the visitation were as keen 
as the words might seem to imply ; to what, then, does 
it all amount? A girl when she loses her lover loses a 
great deal, whoever he may be, and under whatever dis- 
advantages he may labor. She has been accustomed to 
regard matrimony as the be-all and end-all of existence, 
and now, just as she has drawn the prize, it seems hard 
to have it taken away. When an engagement is ab- 
ruptly broken off, there are various petty mortifications 
which the fair deserted has to bear. Ever since she has 
woven her silken toils round the unwary male she has 
been the envy of her fellow-virgins. She- has walked, 
erect and superior among them all. It has been gratify- 
ing to display in public the devotion of her swain, to 
trot him out, and to show the perfect ease with which he 
is to be managed, just as the equestrian in the hippo- 
drome loves to exhibit the delicacy of hand with which 
he controls a young thoroughbred. All this is now 
over. She must descend from her pinnacle; the trophy 
of her prowess is gone, and her glory is departed. Doubt- 
less, she was " devotedly attached to the young man." 
Still, the real feeling uppermost in her mind is one of 
mortification and annoyance. Juvenile attachments are 



432 BROKEN HEARTS. 

easily replaced — " lightly come, lightly go." A new sea- 
son will bring a new' admirer, and the broken heart is 
healed. And even for " wounded fawns " of less tender 
years there yet remains a balm to cure. Love may be 
fickle, but justice is sure, though slow. The much-in- 
jured fair one has but to make known her tale of wrong, 
the blight which has fallen upon her innocent, confiding 
heart, to the sympathetic ear of a jury, and, can she but 
make her case clear, consolation, in the shape of pecu- 
niary damages nicely apportioned to the bitterness of 
the wrong, will certainly be hers. It is astonishing how 
effectually the melancholy of lovely women can be as- 
suaged by a proclamation of her wrongs and the acqui- 
sition of a few thousand dollars. 

On the other hand, the lover, when torn from the 
smiles and caresses of his affianced bride, whether it be 
by the parental command or the sentence of the fickle 
fair one herself, must bear his fate as best he may. He 
will of course try to " forget the whole thing " in the way 
that seems most natural to him. If he endeavors to 
court oblivion by applying himself with renewed energy 
to the duties of his station, whatever they may be, it is 
not unlikely that it will be hinted that "he never cared 
much about her." ■ If, on the other hand, his affliction 
begets entire recklessness, his life becoming henceforward 
one perpetual seed-time of wild oats, there are never 
wanting those who will volunteer pardon and pity: 
" Poor fellow, his heart is broken." It must be very 
comforting to the sufferer to meet with excuse where 
persons who could boast of no such affliction would have 
to face storms of condemnation and horror. Perhaps it 
would be hard to grudge him this solace. How pleasant 
to know that, even in this age of iron, there yet breathe 
sympathizing spirits who are able to recognize, in all its 



BROKEN HEARTS. 433 

vagaries, traces of a broken heart and blighted hopes ! 
But misplaced sympathy and pity are more pernicious 
than unmerited censure. The rejected youth has been 
thus roughly aroused from his dreams of love with prob- 
ably a considerable amount of vexation. He has felt a 
certain pride in the prospect of one day being the lord 
and master of a girl, young, engaging, and admired — he 
may even have felt much more; but when the object 
which excited the emotion has departed, the emotion 
itself will quickly follow: 

"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns from thoughts 
of love." 

A period of calm reflection soon succeeds. After all, may 
it not be better that the whole thing is ended ? Would 
it not have been rash ? And might he not have repented 
when it was too late? Now, these thoughts and self- 
questionings are perfectly natural. It might be well if, 
even in cases where no obstacle was interposed between 
the desire and the consummation, they oftener suggested 
themselves, or, suggesting themselves, were oftener acted 
upon. It may seem an act of devotion on the lover's 
part to be constant even against the dictates of prudence, 
to refuse to break his vows lest he should break the 
heart of her to whom he has pledged them. But the fear 
is generally idle, and the devotion is too often productive 
in after life of misery to both persons concerned. As a 
matter of fact, it is a rare thing for a young heart to be 
broken through a disappointment in love. Of all the 
cant and pseudo-sentiment rife at the present day, the 
theory of the broken heart, under the aspects in which 
we have regarded it, is perhaps the weakest and the 
worst. The duke of Wellington was skeptical respecting 
young people dying of love. " We read occasionally," 

37 2C 



434 



BROKEN HEARTS. 



says the Iron Duke, " of desperate cases of this descrip- 
tion, but I cannot say that I have ever yet known of a 
young lady dying of love. They contrive in some mea- 
sure to live and look tolerably well notwithstanding their 
despair and continued absence of the lover; and some 
have even been known to recover so far as to take a 
second lover, if the absence of the first has lasted too 
long." 

Of course people do not literally die of love, but they 
may suffer that compared with which any physical 
rupture of the heart of which physicians tell us is a 
mere trifle. Physicians, however, tell us that when there 
is a predisposition to disease, unhappiness of this sort — 
" something on the mind " is the phrase — has been the 
determining cause of death. Thus an incalculable amount 
of misery is produced, not by any deliberate wickedness, 
but by fickle feeling and light-hearted selfishness. A 
really tender and profound nature is tortured until sen- 
sibility is blunted by some gaudy, worthless insect of a 
moment, only noteworthy for its terrible capacity for in- 
flicting pain. 





HE LOVES, HE LOVES ME NOT." 



GETTING MARRIED. 




ACHEL," said the Quaker to the damsel whom he 
had summoned from the farmhouse up to which 
he had suddenly ridden on a gaunt horse — 
" Rachel, the Lord hath sent me to marry thee." 
And Rachel, dropping her eyes, made answer, 
" The Lord's will be done !" 

Yet Rachel sighed as she spoke, and woman is by 
nature averse to marriage. Woman loves the perma- 
nent, but she hates the public. Woman loves love, but 
she abhors mechanism. Woman loves to be loved, but 
she hates to be captured. We speak of the Absolute 
Woman — woman unsophisticated, when, wild in woods, 
the noble savagess ran away from the noble savage, her 
earrings of mountain-ash coral twinkling against the 
green, and her form tremulous like a jelly with the 
speed of her flight. Fly she did. The testimony of the 
first noble savage is express. " I turned; she fled" says 
he to the " social angel." The fact is she saw something 
in his eye she did not like. To grow loving and loving, 
that is beautiful ; but to clip the ambrosial wings and 
cage them by a preconcerted mechanism, that is abhor- 
rent to the heart of the natural, unsophisticated woman. 
Nor less so to the heart of the cultivated woman when 

435 



436 GETTING MARRIED. 

love itself or the first fluttering heart-throbs that beat 
the air upward to the heaven of love stir in the spirit 
of the young maiden. 

If you have ever listened with an ear-trumpet at a 
trou-de-Judas to the innocent sweet talk of two girls of 
seventeen when the candle is out and the sleep not yet 
in, you know what that talk is. It is of love, eternal, 
innocent love, and eternal union, too, but not of the 
mechanical operation of getting married. 

" Oft in ray silly wonderings 
I've wished this little isle had wings, 
And we, within its fairy bowers, 
Were wafted off to seas unknown, 
Far from the cruel and the cold, 
Where not a pulse should beat but ours ; 
Where the bright eyes of angels only 
Should come around us to behold 
A paradise so pure and lonely, 
Where we might live, love, die, alone." 

We fear the lines are loosely quoted, but that's the 
sort of thing for woman. In the LVth of the " Lettres 
Persanes" of Montesquieu, Rica writes from Paris to 
Ibben with horror and disgust of the definiteness in time 
and place of the marriage rite among the Christians. 

If there is anything woman abhors, it is being pre- 
dicted about in her love matters "sans consultur les 
astres." She has no objection to consult the stars or the 
daisies — "he loves me, loves me not" — or the birds — 
" tell me, cuckoo, fair and fine !" — or the coffee-grounds 
or the cards ; but she hates the inductive process in love 
matters applied by people who have no business with 
her. It is only the natural inconsequence of the sex 
which makes them take to social science meetings, un- 
less, indeed, we say, instead, that scientific women, fond 



GETTING MARRIED. 437 

of averages and regulative conceptions and social mech- 
anism, are hybrid beings. Look at a rose at sunset : it 
is a bud. Look at it in the morning; it is a flower. 
That is the kind of thing woman loves. She may read 
Mr. Buckle as much as she likes ; her natural tendency 
is still to the sweet unconscious stealth of nature ; and 
as soon as ever she sees a science of society really taking 
light, she will snuff it out in disgust. 

To return to marriage. The intervention of the priest 
in the matter is so much like an incantation to women 
that we suspect they all rather like it. This is not the 
case with men. But women love the minister; and if 
there could be devised some scheme of private betrothal 
in which the minister officiated, and some way of adding 
a civil sanction, but without the public and definite 
formality of "getting married," unsophisticated women 
would hail with great satisfaction such an arrangement. 
The unwatched mystery of the blowing rose — that is the 
young heart's first conception of love ; and among the 
best natures "getting married" is an idea that brings 
with it a shock. Who can see the butterfly hovering 
over the head of a registered Psyche? And as the par- 
son told Solomon Macey, "it's the regester as does it." 

Yet it is notorious that a good many women get mar- 
ried. You may even see marriages advertised, if you 
look. Among civilized savages in all nations the blow- 
ing-rose conception is scouted. People will interfere. 
They propose toasts, and make the rosebud cry. They 
send the couple away to some place in the map which 
they all know. They throw shoes. They cut jokes. 
They ring bells. Among the vulgar they make jangling 
noises with pots and kettles, marrow-bones and cleavers. 
Calithumpian bands perform in front of the house to 
which the couple have been pursued. In fact, every- 

37* 



438 GETTING MARRIED. 

body knows and everybody meddles. " Chose hon- 
teuse !" as Rica says. 

. Not that we would too severely condemn the innocent 
curiosity of common natures. u Charles proposed to me 
yesterday," said Alice to Maud. " Oh, du tell ! I du so 
admire to know !" said Maud. " Well, dear, he put his 
arm round my waist, and he asked me if I'd hev him, 
and I said yes, and, golly ! didn't he squeeze and kiss 
me !" This was harmless in its way, but it stamps the 
people. But nothing can be told in detail about the joys 
of love, nor about the joys of heaven. "Ask no ques- 
tions and you'll hear no stories " — the child's rebuff is 
good here. Those who as yet stand without are like 
people watching a lighted palace with veiled casements, 
and listening to the music within. 

" Io, Hymen Hymensee, io ; 
Io, Hymen Hymensee." 

Try what you can get out of that. You won't get any- 
thing more. Remember that " violets plucked the sweet- 
est showers will ne'er make grow again." The vulgarest 
and most misleading of all the communications which 
pretend to lead you by a back way into the luminous 
palace are those which enlarge upon the convenience 
and comfort of married life to the man. As if any man 
could not make his own tea or sew on a button ! 

Yet women — sophisticated by civilized life — lend them- 
selves far too much to this view of the subject. Why, we 
have even been told that one great reason why men do 
get not married nowadays is that women cannot cook 
mutton-chops and potatoes. The most terribly cruel 
punishment ever inflicted by the Inquisition was to shut 
a fond couple up for ever, giving them, however, light 
and air enough to live by while a certain limited amount 



GETTING MARRIED. 439 

of food lasted them. During his first courtship David 
Copperfield lived principally " on coffee and Dora," and 
very good living, too; yet without mutton-chops and 
potatoes even Venus Urania freezes. 

But are we to believe that any man who loved a woman 
was deterred from marrying her by the knowledge that 
she was not a good cook? Do roses cook? Do the ser- 
aphim ? Did ever woman love her husband that could 
not learn to cook? If things come to the worst, can't a 
man do his own cooking, or send out for his dinner to a 
cook-shop ? The ruffian who talks of potatoes knows 
nothing of the " inly touch of love." It is this unfortu- 
nate tendency to indulge men in the ruffianly view of 
marriage that permits them to decline so shamefully, 
after marriage, from the higher point of view. 

An unfortunate wife once complained that whereas, 
when she was first married, her husband used to lace up 
all the holes of her stays for her in the morning, he gradu- 
ally dropped the attention, hole by hole, till at last she 
had to do it all by herself ! Still worse was the case of 
another lady — a gentle, fairy-like creature, as frail as a 
honeysuckle, and, we believe, much sweeter. "Take 
away } 7 our great cold hoofs," said her husband to her one 
very cold night when her feet happened to touch his as 
they were composing themselves for sleep. " Ah !" said 
the poor girl, " when we were first married, you used to 
say, ' Where are your dear little footsy-tootsies ?' " It is 
heartrending stories like this — alas! too common — which 
seem to emphasize the necessity of the training of the 
imagination under the soft yoke of love. 

" We are going shortly," said an unfortunate, gifted 
woman — " we are going shortly to try if we have imagin- 
ation enough to keep our hearts warm." She meant 
they were going to expose themselves to the trials of 



440 GETTING MARRIED. 

housekeeping together, and the incalculable difficulties 
which come with a family. In the enormous majority 
of cases, to marry is to sacrifice far more comfort and 
convenience than is gained at the same time. With a 
great many happy couples there is no need of what Mary 
Wallstonecroft meant by "imagination," because they 
never have ideals, and so, by use and want alone, a sin- 
cere attachment grows into affection. But with those 
natures which in their normal action sublimate every- 
thing in their lives, the height to which passion has lifted 
them is so great that, unless they continue to employ 
their imaginative vision in married life, "your pretty 
little footsy-tootsies " may soon become " your great cold 
hoofs." This exercise of the "imagination " may be de- 
scribed by another name : it is only a form of fidelity or 
truthfulness — simple-hearted adherence to the best thing 
that we have known or seen or felt. We cannot always 
be on the heights, but we can always remember that we 
have been there, and that the heights exist. After, and 
amidst the beautiful bowery places in our lives, come, of 

necessity, 

" the arid tracts 
Where only faith or duty acts," 

and it is then that we need all that imagination in the 
high sense can do for us — not to make real the spectral, 
or to, cozen ourselves in any way, but to keep the garland 
of life from trailing in the dust while we go about inev- 
itable duties or confront inevitable disgusts. No man 
can be happy in married life unless he sees more in it 
than, according to the old formula of the Puritan prayer, 
he " can ask or even think of:" 

"A promise and a mystery, 
A pledge of more than passing life, 
Yea, in that very name of wife." 



GETTING MARRIED. 441 

These lines come from Coleridge's most exquisite poem 
of " The Happy Husband," and it would be a sin against 
the subject not to complete the quotation : 

" A pulse of love that ne'er can sleep, 
A feeling that upbraids the heart 
With happiness beyond desert, 
That gladness half requests to weep, 
Nor bless I not the keener sense 
And unalarming turbulence 

" Of transient joys that ask no sting 
From jealous fears, or coy denying ; 
But born beneath Love's brooding wing, 
And into tenderness soon dying, 
Wheel out their giddy moments, then 
Eesign the soul to Love again. 

" A more precipitated view 
Of notes that eddy in the flow 
Of smoothest song, they come, they go, 
And leave their sweeter understrain 
Its own sweet self — a love of thee 
That seems yet cannot greater be 1" 

Is not that beautiful ? It speaks, in a whisper, too, the 
real reason why men and women are shy of speech on 
love matters. 



-dXP*^ 



MISERIES OF THE HONEYMOON. 




HE common belief is that the time of the honey- 
moon is one of the most pure and genuine bliss. 
But this, it appears, is somewhat of a delusion, 
because people make the most dreadful blunders 
in their arrangements. One of the most common 
and most conspicuous is to go on a long journey. As a 
rule, a newly-married couple could scarcely do a more 
rash and ill-considered thing. The tremendous revolu- 
tion in thoughts and habits which cannot but ensue 
from the new state of things is quite bad enough without 
adding to the strangeness and novelty by surrounding 
the already bewildered bride with the unusual customs 
and ordinances of hotels. The annoying bustle and 
confusion, the presence of people under circumstances in 
which at home one is accustomed to their absence, the 
horribly deficient accommodation in the shape of dress- 
ing-rooms and baths, and a variety of startling usages, 
combine to make a stay in most hotels rather a serious 
trial. Even to a man it is trying. The bridegroom may 
be nearly as much harassed as his less audacious com- 
panion. Still, hers is. the harder part. 

But in arranging a honeymoon is not all traveling 
about from place to place a clear blunder ? Traveling has 

442 



MISERIES OF THE HONEYMOON. 443 

a fearfully trying effect on the temper with most people. 
It makes them peevish and hasty. They never succeed 
in getting their baggage and tickets fairly off their minds, 
or else they show a fatuitous indifference about them 
which is for ever causing all sorts of confusion and hor- 
rid discomfort. Many people, too, who are thoroughly 
agreeable in an ordinary way display the strangest and 
most unsuspected traits when they find themselves 
among unfamiliar faces. They begin to give themselves 
curious airs, as if they were persons of quality and con- 
sequence in disguise, or they shrink timorously or defi- 
antly into the depths of their inner selves. 

Then, again, frequent changes do not agree with every- 
body. Most people are dreadfully worried by being 
transplanted from one place to another. Those who 
shine most brilliantly at their own firesides become 
clouded over elsewhere, and repeated changes usually 
submerge them in gloom and moodiness. All this shows 
that for two people to set off on a trip which entails a 
number of longish journeys and a great variety of stop- 
ping-places is not the proper plan for allowing each to 
see the best of the other, because not one person in a 
thousand is seen at his best when traveling, and a great 
many are seen at their very worst. 

At the same time, it is possible to fall into a grievous 
mistake on the other side. Seeing the discomforts of 
taking a newly-married wife to a series of strange hotels, 
some men ensconce themselves in sequestered dells and 
in remote spots in the country or by the sea-side. Here 
you may perhaps have leisure to discover and contem- 
plate the good-points of your companion, only the leisure 
proves too often thoroughly disproportionate to the good 
points. The good points are not adequate to filling up 
all the time, and then, unfortunately, the margin of time 



444 MISERIES OF THE HONEYMOON. 

unoccupied fills itself up by the discovery of bad points. 
The happy couple forget that the person you like best in 
all the world may still upon occasion have the power of 
boring you as frightfully as the person you most dislike. 
In one of Miss Braddon's novels a situation of this sort 
is made to lead up to a fearful catastrophe in the form 
of a prolonged estrangement between husband and wife. 
Instead of going to some place where there is plenty of 
life and diversion, the hero is induced by a treacherous 
friend to spend his honeymoon in a place where he and 
his wife see no faces but their own for five or six weeks. 
Of course the design of the treacherous friend is accom- 
plished perfectly. At the end of the time the bride can 
scarcely endure the sight of her new lord, and the new 
lord, though too thick-headed to be distinctly bored, 
feels that something has gone seriously wrong between 
them. And the case is doubtless not uncommon in real 
life. Two people must have a very extraordinary amount 
of internal resources to go and spend five or six weeks 
together in some place which is indescribably pretty and 
romantic, but at the same time very lonely and very 
dull. Of course, if they work at science or history or 
philosophy for five or six hours a day, they may get on 
very well. A walk together and dinner together after 
this would not be likely to pall. But then the majority 
of brides and bridegrooms take no interest whatever in 
science or philosophy, or solid pursuits of any kind. If 
they cannot spend the time in amusement or business 
or conversation or thinking about amusement or busi- 
ness, they fall into the grasp of a gigantic ennui. Ex- 
cept in the case of two very strong and cultivated minds, 
there can scarcely be a more fatal blunder than the at- 
tempt to enjoy unmixed bliss in a lonely honeymoon. 
When two people have a long common past to look back 



MISERIES OF THE HONEYMOON. 445 

upon together it is different. But looking forward to- 
gether to a long common future is marvelously unsatis- 
factory, after a very short time. The future has nothing 
tangible and certain, as the past has ; so the two minds 
roam vacantly through space, wishing it was dinner-time. 
The duke was perhaps right when he declared that 

" Such as I am all lovers are, 
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, 
Save in the constant image of the creature 
That is beloved." 

But when the lover has become the husband, after a 
prolonged honeymoon in a dull and lonely place the con- 
stant image may absolutely generate an unstaid skittish- 
ness, if not downright ill-humor and weariness. 

It may be suspected, when the honeymoon is a fail- 
ure, the result is due either to an extravagant transcen- 
dental pitch of mind which must always end in vex- 
ation, or else to some mistake in selecting the place and 
manner in which the time is to be passed. 

It is not certain, though, that something may not be 
said for the plan of the bride and bridegroom who went 
quietly home and began home-life the day they were 
married, and took a honeymoon trip some six months 
afterward, when they had had time to get accustomed 
to one another. Only this is not a honeymoon, and he 
would be an audacious social leveler, with need of oak 
and triple brass about his breast, who should dare to sug- 
gest the abolition of the mystic institution. 

38 



SWEETS OF MARRIED LIFE. 




ARRIAGE, which most girls consider the sole aim 
of their existence and the end of all their anxi- 
eties, is often the beginning of a set of troubles 
which none among them expect, and which, 
when they come, very few accept with the dig- 
nity of patience or t^ie reasonableness of common sense. 
Hitherto the man has been the suitor, the wooer; 
it has been his metier to make love, to utter extrava- 
gant professions, to talk poetry and romance of an emi- 
nently unanswerable kind, and to swear that feelings 
which by the very nature of things it is impossible to 
maintain at their present state of fever heat will be as last- 
ing as life itself, and never know subsidence or diminu- 
tion. And girls believe all that their lovers tell them. 
They believe in the absorption of the man's whole life 
in the love which at the most cannot be more than a 
part of his life; they believe that things will go on for 
ever as they have begun, and that the fire and fervor of 
passion will never cool down to the more manageable 
warmth of friendship. And in this belief of theirs lies 
the rock on which not a few make such pitiful shipwreck 
of their married happiness. They expect their hus- 
bands to remain always lovers — not lovers only in the 
best sense, which of course all happy husbands are to 

446 



SWEETS OF MARRIED LIFE. 447 

the end of time, but lovers as in the old fond, foolish 
courting days. They expect a continuance of the ro- 
mance, the poetry, the .exaggeration, the petits soins, the 
microscopic attentions, the absorption of thought and 
interest, the centralization of his happiness in her so- 
ciety, just as in the days when she was still to be won, 
or, a little later, when, being won, she was new in the 
wearing. And as we said before, a wife's first trial, and 
her greatest, is when her husband begins to leave off 
this kind of fervid love-making, and settles down into 
the tranquil friend instead. 

It is in the nature of most women to require continual 
assurances, just as it is with children ; and \erj few be- 
lieve in a love which is not frequently expressed, while 
the ability to trust in the vital warmth of an affection 
that has lost its early feverishness is the mark of a higher 
wisdom than most of them possess. 

Nothing is more annoying than that display of affec- 
tion which some husbands and wives show to each other 
in society. That familiarity of touch, those half-con- 
cealed caresses, those absurd names, that prodigality of 
endearing epithets, that devoted attention which they 
flaunt in the face of the public as a kind of challenge to 
the world at large to come and admire their happiness, is 
always noticed and laughed at; and sometimes more than 
laughed at. Yet to some women this parade of love is 
the very essence of married happiness and part of their 
dearest privileges. They believe themselves admired 
and envied, when they are ridiculed and scoffed at; and 
they think their husbands are models for other men to 
copy, when they are taken as examples for all to avoid. 
This public display of familiar affection is never seen 
among men who pride themselves on making good lovers, 
as certain men do — those who have reduced the practice 



448 SWEETS OF MARRIED LIFE. 

of love-making to an art, a science, and know their lesson 
to the letter. These men are delightful to women, who 
like nothing so much as being made love to, as well after 
marriage as before ; but men who take matters quietty, 
and rely on the good sense of their wives to take matters 
quietly too, sail round these scientific adorers for both 
depth and manliness. And if women knew their best 
interests, they would care more for the trust than the 
science. 

All that excess of flattering and petting of which women 
are so fond becomes a bore to a man if required as part 
of the daily habit of life. Out in the world as he is, har- 
assed by anxieties of which she knows nothing, home is 
emphatically his place of rest, where his wife is his friend 
who knows his mind, where he may be himself without 
the fear of offending, and relax the strain that must be 
kept up out of doors, where he may feel himself safe, 
understood, and at ease. And some women, and these 
by no means the coldest or the least loving, are wise 
enough to understand this need of rest in the man's 
harder life, and, accepting the quiet of security as part 
of the conditions of marriage, content themselves with 
the undemonstrative love into which the fever of passion 
has subsided. Others fret over it, and make themselves 
and their husbands wretched because they cannot believe 
in that which is not for ever paraded before their eyes. 
Yet what kind of home is it for the man if he has to 
walk as if on egg-shells, every moment afraid of wound- 
ing the susceptibilities of a woman who will take noth- 
ing on trust, and who has to be continually assured that 
he still loves her before she will believe that to-day is as 
yesterday ? Of one thing she may be certain : no wife 
who understands what is the best kind of marriage de- 
mands these continual attentions, which, voluntary offer- 



SWEETS OF MARRIED LIFE. 449 

ings of the lover, become enforced tribute from the hus- 
band. She knows that as a wife, whom it is not necessary 
to court or flatter, she has a nobler place than that which 
is expressed by the attentions paid to a mistress. Wife- 
hood, like all assured conditions, does not need to be. 
buttressed up ; but a less certain position must be sup- 
ported from the outside, and an insecure self-respect, 
an uncertain holding, must be perpetually strengthened 
and reassured. And yet we cannot but pity the poor, 
weak, craving souls who long so pitifully for the fresh- 
ness of the morning to continue far into the day and 
evening, who cling so tenaciously to the fleeting ro- 
mance of youth. They are taken by the glitter of 
things — love-making among the rest ; and the man who 
is showiest in his affection, who can express it with 
most color, and paint it, so to speak, with the minutest 
touches, is the man whose love seems to them the most 
trustworthy and the most intense. What is to be done 
to balance things evenly in this unequal world of sex? 
What, indeed is to be done at any time to reconcile 
strength with weakness and to give each its due ? One 
thing at least is sure : the more thoroughly women learn 
the true nature of men, the fewer mistakes they will 
make and the less unhappiness they will create for them- 
selves ; and the more patient men are with the hysterical 
excitability, the restless craving, which nature, for some 
purpose at present unknown, has made the special tem- 
perament of women, the fewer femmes incomprises there 
will be in married homes and the larger, the chance of 
married happiness. All one's theories of domestic life 
come down at last to the give and take system, to bear- 
ing and forbearing, and meeting halfway idiosyncrasies 
which one does not personally share. 

38* 2D 



YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 




HE most beautiful period in the life of human 
beings is that just following marriage, when the 
frenzy and anxiety of courtship is all over and 
love reaches the peaceful Lotus-land in which 
there is no more climbing up the ever-climbing 
wave — no more worry and jealousy and heartbreaking 
uncertainty. In a previous article we ventured to coun- 
sel young people not to eat their cake too soon — to make 
good use of that extended time of alternate joy and de- 
spair, quarreling and peace-making, regret and happy 
anticipation, which precedes marriage. "The cruel mad- 
ness of love," w T hich most people suffer during that per- 
plexing period, is in itself a sort of " liberal education,' 7 
begetting an enlarged sympathy with all other forms of 
human ill. But the extraordinary contrast presented by 
the year before marriage and the year after marriage 
would almost lead one to recall the advice, and beg 
young people to escape at once from alternate cat-scratch- 
ing and ringdove-cooing into the sober and beautiful and 
happy calm of post-nuptial life. The small jealousies 
are for ever gone. The right of absolute possession con- 
fers a certain sense of superiority which is generous in 
its allowances and interpretations. Harry no longer 

450 



YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 451 

feels a prodigious qualm of anger and aversion if he sees 
from afar off his Emily seated in conversation with that 
offensive captain who has a habit of leering at women, 
and who, as Harry knows, was requested by the secre- 
tary to withdraw his name from the member-list of a 
certain club a few days ago. There is no longer any fear 
that some slight cause of quarrel may arise just as the 
evening draws to a close, and send thes*e two young peo- 
ple to their respective homes with a frightful load of 
misery upon their hearts. Explanations, when expla- 
nations are required, are not now difficult to make, and 
there is no longer necessary that tiresome hunt for an op- 
portunity. Above all, the young people are not dependent 
on others for the chances of being brought together. It 
is well known what a terrible amount of boring our 
young men and women are compelled by society to suf- 
fer before they can get to speak quietly together. Harry, 
who hates the theatre and all its ways, pretends to have 
an inordinate love for all the new pieces which are being 
brought out, so that Emily may be induced to ask her 
elder sister and her mamma to go with her and him. 
Emily, who takes picture-exhibitions to be the dullest 
thing in this unhappy world, is forced to cultivate a spu- 
rious artistic taste that so she may have an excuse for 
walking round one or two hushed rooms in Harry's com- 
pany. In either case they ma} r not be able to exchange 
half a dozen sentences relative to their own particular 
secret^, and yet for that gratification one or other has to 
suffer hours of social martyrdom. Then look at the 
frightful amount of hypocrisy which this period de- 
mands. To ward off suspicion, great attention has to be 
paid to the person or persons who accompany Emily. 
The inevitable dragon has to be pacified. The clumsy 
and obvious way in which some boys when in love en- 



452 YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

deavor to conciliate the dragon is extremely amusing. 
Young man, it is not necessary to make love to her. 
Doesn't she know that the pretty speeches are tortured 
out of you in order that she may be lenient, and allow 
) 7 ou and some other fatuous young person to sit unmo- 
lested for ten whole minutes in a seat behind the top 
screen, when there are only two other people in the ex- 
hibition-room, and they are fast asleep ? It has been our 
great good fortune to know a number of dragons, of di- 
vers hues and temperaments. As a rule, they are the 
kindliest of human beings, and in more than one in- 
stance with which we are acquainted they have been 
quite as desirable and agreeable companions as the 
young ladies who are protected by their sheltering wing. 
Young man, if at the moment when you are so hypo- 
criticalty anxious to convey to the mind of your par- 
ticular friend's dragon that she, the dragon, is an angel, 
and the descendant of angels, you would for a second 
seriously ask yourself whether the term might not, in 
sober earnest, be as fitly applied to her as to your mu- 
tual and youthful friend — if you would seriously ask 
yourself whether, in wit, and graceful manner, and pleas- 
ant looks, and easy conversation, the dragon might not, 
after all, be put up as a perpetual model for her whom 
alone you are then considering — if you would seriously 
ask what special graces they are which you suppose to 
exist in this other young creature, and which render the 
uncomplaining dragon's society a plague and a pest, — 
you might gain some wisdom by the comparison, and 
perhaps be led to act upon its direct conclusion. All 
that time of perplexity, trouble, and hypocrisy is now at 
an end. " The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love " 
no longer meet " The matron's glance that would those 
looks reprove." 



YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 453 

For the young wife is now herself a matron in a small 
, way. She has little airs of patronage for her girl-friends. 
She is anxious to give them the result of her large expe- 
rience of her wedded life, extending over a couple of 
months, perhaps, in order to counsel them in their love- 
affairs. She is delighted to become the repository of 
love-secrets, and assumes, in the most innocent fashion, 
a motherty air of caution and profundity in advising her 
young friends. She is inexhaustibly talkative at this 
time — talkative to old gentlemen about the sanitary 
effects of country air, and eager to acquire knowledge on 
the subject, of water-rates ; talkative to elderly ladies on 
furniture, the due cost of table-linen, and the difficulty 
of keeping the silver bright; talkative to middle-aged 
ladies upon the incurable curse of servants and how to 
pacify a surly gardener ; talkative to girls of her own age 
.on the advantages of getting married. 

" My dear, you must marry," she says, with an air of 
profound and patronizing wisdom, to some poor girl who 
is already engaged to one suitor and pestered by three or 
four others, but who does not think of marrying any the 
more for that. 

" I suppose I must, some time" says the girl, wickedly. 

"But, my dear, you don't know — you don't know. 
You go on tormenting yourself and all these young men 
to no purpose. You are losing the best part of your life 
in aimless flirtation." 

" Oh, Cousin Kate, how can you say so?" protests the 
young hypocrite, who is at the same moment profoundly 
conscious that a young gentlemen is studying her profile 
and the delicate pose of her arm and fan. 

" You are scattering your attentions on so many, when 
you ought to devote them to making one man supremely 
happy." 



454 YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

" When I marry, Cousin Kate," she retorts, " I expect 
my husband to devote himself to making me supremely 
happy." 

" My dear, you will soon acquire a notion of the duties 
of a wife when you marry, and you will find your best 
pleasure in fulfilling them." 

" Cousin Kate, how long have you been married that 
you begin to talk like my grandmother already ?" says 
the young princess, moving off in petulance and pride to 
receive the homage and admiration of her three or four 
too obedient suitors. 

Sometimes, of course, the example of the young wife, 
if she be given to proselytizing, has a prodigious effect 
upon her circle of feminine acquaintance. You will 
sometimes see a whole bevy of girls smitten with the 
marrying mania, and all arising from the fact that the 
prime spirit among them has suddenly taken a husband. 
It is very difficult to get a sheep to jump over a ditch ; 
but once you have got the first over, the rest of the flock 
need little inducement to follow. 

Now, regarding the whole matter from a utilitarian 
point of view, we counsel lovers to protract the " en- 
gaged " period as long as possible. In like manner, and 
much more emphatically, we would have this beautiful 
time that follows a happy marriage carried as far into the 
remainder of life as possible. What is it that cuts it 
short? Why do people naturally look for a marked 
and perceptible difference in the relations between hus- 
band and wife after they have been a little time — say 
a year or two — married ? There are a great many causes 
which may tend, more or less directly, to this very unsat- 
isfactory result, and we shall look at one or two of 
them. •• 

In the first place, the young wife sets out with an 



YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 455 

idiotic determination to be matronly at once. This is 
very pretty for a time, while the natural girlishness 
shines through the amiable hypocrisy, and while its only 
effect is to alternately amuse and embarrass the young 
husband. We happen to know, for example, a young 
creature who, some few years ago, married a clergyman. 
His living was not a very brilliant one ; but, on the other 
hand, it was not a poor one, and certainly it was suffi- 
cient to keep them both decently dressed. However, 
nothing would do for the young wife but that she must 
needs make all her husband's clothes ; and if anything 
could have reconciled one to an arrangement which 
made him a perpetual guy, it was the good humor with 
which he wore the wondrously-shaped garments, and 
the innocent and garrulous pride she betrayed in talking 
of them. We say this determination to be superhu- 
manly matronly — to anticipate the current of years and 
become prematurely practical — is very pardonable while 
it is only a pretty affection ; but, unfortunately, it con- 
stantly tends to produce the actual change which is at 
first only assumed. The girl does become prematurely 
practical; and in her haste to fit herself for her new 
duties she flings for ever behind her that charm of girl- 
ishness, that novelty and freshness of character, which 
was once her principal attraction. The husband, who 
is inclined to be amused by the superior airs of practical 
wisdom exhibited by his young wife, begins to be aware 
of the fact that she is growing to be what she would be. 
He discovers, in short, that he has married, not a wife, 
but a housekeeper. In time the only ground on which 
they meet in common is that of domestic affairs. She 
considers the household to be so exclusively her sphere 
of occupation, and she so religiously limits herself to 
that sphere, that a certain marked line begins to separate 



456 YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

them. He confines himself to his own business or voca* 
tions ; she, in the plenitude of her virtuous resolutions, 
occupies herself solely with the practical necessities of 
every-day life ; and so they drop down into the ordinary 
routine of marriage, as is exemplified in nine-tenths of 
commonplace lives. 

The fatal blunder lies in the primary notion, appar- 
ently possessed by most girls, that in entering the sphere 
of marriage they must surrender themselves entirely to 
certain paramount duties, and that these duties demand 
the sacrifice of all the graceful little occupations which 
lent a charm to their not very dramatic or picturesque 
lives during the period of girlhood. Lady moralists, 
inveighing against the undomesticated habits and use- 
lessness of the modern young gentlewoman, have pushed 
their theories to such an extreme that a notion seems to 
have got abroad that marriage sets a death -seal upon all 
the pretty accomplishments and occupations of young 
ladyhood. Men marry, we are told, in order to get good 
dinners cooked. They seek a wife that she may sew on 
buttons, look after the servants, sit up at night, and hold 
her tongue. Why, Mrs. Poyser had a nobler theory of 
marriage when she suggested that " what a man wants 
in a wife mostly is to make sure o' one fool as '11 tell 
him he's wise." If it comes to be argued upon that 
ground, our lady instructors may be informed that a 
bachelor can get a much better cooked dinner at his club 
than his wife is ever likely to provide for him at home, 
and that the expense of keeping up an establishment 
for a wife would more than cover the wages of the most 
experienced housekeepers that could be found. How- 
ever, a large number of women seem to fancy that it is 
their proper business after marriage to sink into the 
position of a housekeeper. Very well. The husbands 



YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 457 

accept the arrangement. And then, of course, one is not 
expected to chat much with one's housekeeper, nor is 
one expected to stay in of an evening in order to please 
her. Perhaps this consideration may explain a good 
deal of the phenomena exhibited in certain households. 
ELeaven forbid that we should suggest to any girl that 
her chief occupations in married life should be playing 
the piano and stitching beads on useless pen- wipers for 
a bazaar. The determination on the part of many young 
gentlewomen to amend their waj^s and alter their habits 
upon becoming wives betrays a praiseworthy and proper 
consciousness of the valueless character of their lives as 
girls. They feel that they must do something to redeem 
themselves from insignificance and uselessness, and that 
they must look out for some worthier employment than 
the trivial and rather tiresome routine of small pleasures 
in which they have been accustomed to spend their time. 
But why fly to the other extreme ? The man who mar- 
ries expects to find a companion who shall share his 
intellectual pleasures as well as his dinners ; who shall 
be able to read and pass her opinion on the last new 
volume of poems as well as deliver a dictum on the 
color of window-curtains ; who shall be able to snatch 
time from her domestic duties to accompany him to this 
or that picture exhibition, instead of spending all her 
leisure in calling upon people for whom she doesn't care 
a straw, or in planning big entertainments for a lot of 
remarkably ungrateful and critical guests. On entering 
the gateway of marriage, the young neophyte need not 
throw behind her her slight acquaintance with modern 
poets, her slender acquirements in foreign languages, her 
interest in pictures, or whatever other intellectual pref- 
erences may have so far idealized her previous life. 
There is nothing incompatible with the character of a 

39 



458 YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

wife in having a lively desire to see Mr. Longfellow's 
new poem, or in taking a great interest in Miss Neilson's 
progress, or in being anxious to know when Mr. Jones 
is going to emancipate his great powers from a cloggy 
mannerism. All these various interests she may have 
shared with her husband when they were both young 
creatures conversing between the figures of a quadrille 
or in walking home from church. Probably he looks 
forward to having this charming companion for ever 
beside him during life ; and very likely he will scarcely 
notice the gradual degrees by which she will subside 
from being a companion into being a sort of household 
fixture, a woman who " sans aucune affaire, est toujours 
affairee," and who ultimately lowers marriage to the 
level of a business arrangement, in which he brings in 
money for her to spend more or less judiciously upon 
their joint requirements. 

One constantly finds marriage degraded in this way 
from its high estate. You see a young couple just mar- 
ried whom you have known in their premarital state. 
You know that both are fairly gifted with brains, that 
they have several strong aesthetic sympathies in com- 
mon, that the husband has plenty of means to indulge 
these intellectual tastes, and that the young people are 
remarkably fond of each other. It is impossible to con- 
ceive more auspicious conditions for the commencement 
of a long life-journey together. Intellectual tastes in 
common form one of the very strongest links between 
husband and wife. They not only widen and beautify 
the character, but they add possibilities to the character 
of each which may afford to the other a series of those 
delicate little surprises which are always grateful in the 
closest friendship. You feel that this spirit which is so 
nearly linked to your own has not exhausted itself. It 



YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 459 

is not altogether open and bare. You come upon little 
whims and caprices of opinion, of judgment, which are 
so many miniature conundrums for you to solve and 
give up. Two young people, so situated, have the most 
grateful prospect before them. Perhaps it is the very 
couple you have caught, in defiance of all tradition and 
custom, dancing together. Their life, you anticipate, is 
to be a prolonged banquet of the more exalted emotions 
and intellectual pleasures. But already the young wife 
has got into her perverse little brains the notion that 
great sacrifices are expected of her. She is to abandon 
all those finer studies which used to adorn her girlhood. 
She is now a wife ; it is her business to throw aside such 
trivial pursuits and devote herself entirely to studying 
the welfare of her husband. Why the welfare of her 
husband should depend entirely upon highly-polished 
furniture, punctual dinners, accurately kept domestic 
accounts (all most desirable things in their way), does 
not appear to us to be quite clear; but doubtless the 
theory has been implanted in her mind by some practi- 
cal and methodical mother or aunt or other adviser. 
So long as her aim is apparent, and the character of 
matter-of-fact housekeeper sits awkwardly upon her, the 
result is very amusing ; but in process of time, as we 
have already said, this assumed character grows perma- 
nent, and the husband finds that his dearest companion 
has somehow raised a barrier between herself and him, 
and that she has taken her place among the rank and 
file of ordinary married women. 

Very often the husband has his share in the produc- 
tion of this lamentable result. Shortly after marriage 
he acquires such a distorted notion of his duties that he 
considers the chief employment of his life to be the 
making of money and the increasing the comforts of 



460 YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

his household for the benefit of his wife. Here, again, 
another puzzle confronts us — why a husband should 
naturally assume that the best means of securing the 
welfare of his wife is the amassing of money. They 
are but human creatures. They can only live a certain 
time. Why, in the name of all that is wonderful, should 
he sacrifice the young years of their married life in toil- 
ing for money which they will never spend, which will 
never benefit them in any way whatever ? Prudence, 
you say, demands that they shall lay up provender for 
their old age. But people who can look forward to a 
fair competency in their old age do not the less sacrifice 
the best years of their life in needlessly increasing that 
competency. Why not postpone the wearisome quest 
of gold for a year or two, and enjoy in the mean time the 
greatest happiness of life? Children, you again urge, 
have to be provided for. But again we reply that chil- 
dren are but human beings, who have no more right to 
sacrifice the lives of their parents than they have to 
sacrifice their own. It may seem very harsh and cruel 
to say it, but men and women are not bound to think 
exclusively of their children. The ordinary habit of 
society is, in this respect, most absurd. A and B marry 
and consider they must be economical, or even penurious, 
in order to give their children C and D not only a fair 
education and equal chances to those which A and B pos- 
sessed, but to start them in married life in that social posi- 
tion which A and B have now secured. C and D marry 
their respective husbands or wives ; and instead of enjoy- 
ing the results of the economy of A and B, they proceed 
to increase the hoard for their children. And so the game 
goes on, no one taking the enjoyment he is entitled ,to 
out of his labor, but gathering up the fruits thereof for 
his son, who, in his turn, cannot enjoy them, but adds to 



YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 461 

them and passes them on to his son. In any case would 
it not be advisable to leave for a year or two this inevi- 
table drudgery which tends so much to take the color 
and glow out of life? If middle age must be mercenary, 
let us at least have a year or two of nobler impulses and 
more exalted enjoyment. It is given to few men to have 
the rare faculty of combining the finer pleasures of life 
with that ceaseless pursuit of money into which, it seems, 
the majority of us must in time fall. If men and women 
must come, sooner or later, to live exclusively for their 
children, let them devote a certain space of time to them- 
selves; and no more suitable or beautiful time can be 
found than that which immediately follows marriage. 

It seems to us that the decline of love between married 
people is a far sadder thing than the same catastrophe 
occurring to unmarried people. The latter accident, let 
sentimentalists say what they like, is always reparable. 
Human nature is not constructed on the impossible 
principle that a man or woman can only love once; and 
so long as one is free there still remains a possible solace 
for all love misfortunes. But once let the love of hus- 
band and wife cool or die out, and what is to supply its 
place? They may continue to live on the most amicable 
terms, they may be excellent companions for each other, 
they may appear to outsiders to be a remarkably happy 
couple, and yet all the time they may lack that very 
element which consecrates marriage, and, in certain 
beautiful instances which must occur to every reader's 
mind, renders it a perpetual treasure and source of hap- 
piness. 

The majority of married men and women seem to ac- 
cept their fate with equanimity, to regard it as a natural 
thing that their first love should die out and their life 
become a whited sepulchre. There is surely no such 

39* 



462 YOUNG HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

direful necessity. One does occasionally meet with mar- 
ried people who have preserved intact the affection 
which first made their life grateful and lovely — people 
who have made that post-nuptial period of which we 
speak perpetual. Be sure, in such cases, that there is 
some higher bond between husband and wife than the 
common one of mutual interest, even if that should take 
the idealized form of parental care. 




LOVE'S LIGHT. 




AST year she wandered through the wood, 
The Spring was on the breeze, 
And overhead, among the trees, 
cp The building ring-doves cooed and cooed ; 
And all round a hundred notes 
Poured fresh and sweet from warbling throats ; 
And she was gay with Earth's glad mood. 

With girlish laughing glee she strayed 

Amid the primrose flowers, 

And from the hawthorn shook in showers 
The fragrant blossoms — wanton maid — 

And making havoc as she went, 

Her merry voice glad snatches sent 
Of song and carol through the glade. 

Again the Spring was in the grove, 

Blithe caroled every bird, 

And overhead again were heard 
The plaintive ring-doves crooning love ; 

Again along the primrose glade, 

Beneath the thorns the maiden strayed, 
And felt the Spring her pulses move. 

But not again she shook the sprays 

With playful fingers rude, v 

To scatter in her careless mood 
Their blooms along the forest ways ; 

463 



464 LOVE'S LIGHT. 

But violet, and primrose fair, 
She gathered in a garland rare, 
And lily bells, and fragrant mays. 

And she was glad, she knew not why — 
And yet her heart knew well 
That fairer smiled each bloomy dell, 

And brighter glowed the glowing sky ; 
The stilly beauty of the place 
Had passed into her musing face, 

And softened all her lustrous eye. 

And through the woodland on she moved, 
Until she reached the stile, 
And resting there, saw many a mile 

Of field and mead, where cattle roved ; 
The homestead and the cottage small, 
Her eyes dwelt lovingly on all — 

She loved them, for she was beloved. 

Last year she was a wayward child, 

A merry madcap thing, 

And frolicked as the birds that wing 
Their random flights along the wild ; 

But Love has come, and everywhere, 

In blooming earth, in balmy air, 
It seems as though an angel smiled. 

And what is Love? A sympathy, 

An intuition rare, 

A sense that need hath ne'er 
Of words to thread the intricacy 

Of thought and feeling's maze, 

A foretaste of the eternal days, 
When God shall lighten every eye. 





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